Constitutional limits on presidential power during the war on terror

¶ … enemy of the state and a common everyday criminal. This claim is used too suggests that different responses are needed to deter or combat these people and their behaviors.

Support

This argument is backed up in many ways leading to the discussion on privacy, terrorism and the rule of law. Mansfield (2006) wrote "This home truth gets little recognition from critics of the Bush administration's surveillance activities in the war on terror. Some of its defenders, too, seem unaware of the full extent to which the Constitution addresses the problems we face today and how useful and relevant its principles prove to be.

Backing

The author backed up this claim with many examples of confusing what a terrorist is and what a common garden variety criminal demonstrates himself as. A discussion of the U.S. Constitution provides much of the backing of this argument. The author wrote "in combining law and discretion, the Framers of the Constitution made a deliberate departure from the sorry history of previous republics that alternated between anarchy and tyranny. The Framers made a strong executive in order to have both power and security, and they took note of emergency occasions when more power gives more security."

Rebuttal

The author does not provide a rebuttal in this article. A useful rebuttal however would suggest that the appearance of terrorism as a true emergency is overrated and not accurate. Fear and hysteria rule the day when confusion is present in the executive office, everyone needs to relax and look at the problem with reason.

Qualifier

The article's author is qualified in the last statement of the article denoting the author' place of work and his role in education. It reads "Harvey Mansfield is the William R. Kenan Jr. professor of government at Harvard.