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In All the Laws but One, William H. Rehnquist, Chief Justice of the United States, provides an insightful and fascinating account of the history of civil liberties during wartime and illuminates the cases where presidents have suspended the law in the name of national security. Abraham Lincoln, champion of freedom and the rights of man, suspended the writ of habeas corpus early in the Civil War--later in the war he also imposed limits upon freedom of speech and the press and demanded that political criminals be tried in military courts. During World War II, the government forced 100,000 U.S. residents of Japanese descent, including many citizens, into detainment camps. Through these and other incidents Chief Justice Rehnquist brilliantly probes the issues at stake in the balance between the national interest and personal freedoms. With All the Laws but One he significantly enlarges our understanding of how the Supreme Court has interpreted the Constitution during past periods of national crisis--and draws guidelines for how it should do so in the future.From the Trade Paperback edition.

I would suggest to you that during the more than two centuries that have elapsed since the American Revolution, American political philosophy has been notable principally for the contrapuntal themes that rise and fall as the nation matures. Numerous commentators have pointed out that certain ideals have long been widely shared by Americans: individual autonomy, liberty, equality, and a belief in limited, decentralized government.1 But no one would be so bold as to describe the present government of the United States as embodying those ideals. We have a strong national government that, with occasional lapses, impinges more and more on the activities of each individual citizen as time goes by.Yet most Americans are downright suspicious of, if not hostile to,governmental authority of any sort. This gap between our feelings about government in the abstract and the existing national, state,and local governments that we have in fact created in this country has made grist for the mill of those who would question the legitimacy of governmental authority-however much that authority may be completely consistent with the United States Constitution.

In recent years litigants have pressed the courts to resolve disputes which were formerly regulated by other social and political institutions. Mr. Justice Rehnquist stresses the crucial importance of nongovernmental institutions in our society. He discusses the need to evaluate the disruptive effect of an adversary proceeding between parties who must continue in an ongoing relationship after their dispute has been settled. The author then suggests that in order to preserve certain social institutions, limits must be placed on the use of adversary proceedings.

There is a tendency among present and former law students to think that the development of the nature and extent of the authority of the federal judiciary, and of the Supreme Court of the United States in particular, may be found in the celebrated cases decided by that Court. To an extent this is undoubtedly true. However, at least two major political struggles in this nation have had as much to do with defining the nature of the judicial power in the federal system as anybut a handful of the major decisions of the Supreme Court. No reported judicial decision of these political struggles exists, because each was conducted in its entirety within or between the other branches of the federal government. Yet, both struggles are nonetheless precedents in the unwritten constitutional law dealing with Article III of the United States Constitution and the power of the federal courts. These events are first, the impeachment of Justice Samuel Chase by the House of Representatives and his subsequent acquittal by the Senate in the first decade of the 19th century; and, second, the proposal by President Franklin Roosevelt referred to by its supporters as the "Court Reorganization Plan" and by its opponents as the "Court Packing Plan."