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Law And War: Individual Rights, Executive Authority, And Judicial Power In England During World War I , Rachel Vorspan

Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines the role of the English courts during World War I, particularly the judicial response to executive infringements on individual liberty. Focusing on the areas of detention, deportation, conscription, and confiscation of property, the Article revises the conventional depiction of the English judiciary during World War I as passive and peripheral. It argues that in four ways the judges were activist and energetic, both in advancing the government's war effort and in promoting their own policies and powers. First, they were judicial warriors, developing innovative legal strategies to legitimize detention and other governmental restrictions on personal. Second, they …