The Patriotic Act first came into effect after the 9/11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington D.C. At the time, it seemed like a very good idea and many Americans were in support of the act as they viewed it as a plausible way of deterring future acts of terrorism. Most of the country was still in shock after the devastation caused by the terrorist attack and naturally, they rallied behind what they thought was an effective response to this major setback. It is clear that the people at that time did not ponder much about the constitutional and political implications of this Act. It is only after the years following the 9/11 attacks that the constitutional and political implications of the Patriotic Act started to manifest themselves (Etzioni, 2004). These manifestations occur in various forms but the common point is that the Patriotic Act violates the constitution in many ways as will be seen throughout this essay.
Constitutional Implications
- The Patriotic Act violates the Fourth amendment, one of the most crucial elements of the United States in a major way. The Fourth amendment protects every single American citizen from unreasonable searches and seizures. According to the United States constitution, the purpose of the Fourth Amendment is to protect “the rights of people to be secure in their persons, houses, appears and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures” (Etzioni, 2004). The Fourth amendment requires that law enforcement officers obtain search warrant from relevant authorities before conducting any search. For an officer to acquire a warrant, he or she must swear before a judge and describe the place that requires searching and the person and potential things that might found in the place. The officer must be able to prove a “probable cause” before the judge even thinks of giving out a search warrant. The Patriotic Act clearly violates this essential piece of the constitution by allowing officers to conduct unwarranted searches on people they deem to be engaging in suspicious activity such as terrorism (Chang, 2001)
- The second constitutional implication of the patriotic act regards a citizen’s right to a public and speedy trial. The United States constitution is very clear when it comes to criminal trials. In every criminal prosecution activity, the constitution stipulates that the accused individual should enjoy a speedy trial that is also public. An impartial jury of the district and the state in which the criminal act has been committed must oversee this trial. In addition, the accused must be comprehensively informed of both the nature as well as cause of his accusation (Chang, 2001). He must also be made aware of the witnesses that will stand against him and must be granted permission to present his own witnesses who will argue in his favor. The final aspect is that the accused must be assisted with counsel if he cannot afford to pay for his own attorney services. The Patriotic Act violates all of these vital elements of the constitution. Not only does it give the government authority to arrest people and charge them without a proper court procedure, the government also jails American Citizens sometimes indefinitely without even a proper trial (Etzioni, 2004). The accused are not given assistance with counsel and neither are they allowed to present witnesses. Sometimes, the entire trials are so rushed that one may find themselves jailed indefinitely one week after arrest. American citizens may find themselves jailed without proper charges and without being to confront the witness laid out against them. In addition, there have been many instances where American citizens who have been labeled as “unlawful combatants” have been held by the government “incommunando” and have even been refused access to attorneys or any other form of counsel (Chang, 2001). This can be seen to be a violation of every citizen’s constitutional right to liberty. Such factor exhibits the unconstitutionality of the Patriotic Act and how it violates the stipulations of the American constitution which the soul and heartbeat of this nation (Kranich, 2009).
- The third implication of the Patriotic Act relates to the freedom of association. The Constitution of the United States states that the Congress is in no way allowed to make any laws that prohibit the free exercise of religion. In addition, no law should be made to prohibit peace from making peaceful assemblies. The Patriotic Act violates this essential constitutional right in a variety of ways (Kranich, 2009). First of all, the government through the FBI in its supposed efforts to “avert terrorism” monitors religious, political and other relevant institutions to supposedly obtain crucial national security data. These monitoring occur even when there is no reasonable suspicion in such assemblies. For instance, the FBI has been notorious for bugging mosques and constantly monitoring them in their pursuit of national security data. This occurs in spite of the fact the people assembling in such venues are just average Americans who have reason to be suspected of terrorist activities at all. The monitoring consequently abuses their national constitutional rights.
- The freedom of speech is another element through which exemplifies a constitutional implication of the patriotic Act. The Constitution is very clear on every citizen’s right freedom of speech. The Patriotic Act, which the government can use to prosecute keepers and librarians of government records if they tell others of the government’s compelled information that is related to terror investigations derides this freedom (Jaeger et al, 2004).
Apart from the constitutional implication observed, the Patriotic Act has several implications to the political arena. These implications are more or less related to the constitutional implications
- One major political implication of the Patriotic Act it cuts back on citizen’s political activity. As mentioned earlier, the Patriotic Act enables the government to monitor political assemblies and gatherings that they may deem to be suspicious. Unfortunately, when it comes to the government, the word “suspicious” is very ambiguous. The people may just be assembling to campaign about a certain aspect of their lives that is related to politics. The government may however deem such a political gathering to be illegal and may whisk those participants away and charge them with conspiracy to commit terrorist activities or for the harboring bad intentions against the people and the government. The government is particularly very suspicious of Islamic political gatherings which it views is participants as advocates of radicalism (Jaeger et al, 2004).
- The other political implication of the Patriotic Act is that it confers or gives immense and unchecked powers to the executive branch of the government. The Act is an exemplification of radicalism in that it confers and consolidates a variety of new powers to the government’s executive branch (Chang, 2001). The Patriotic Act gives unlimited power to the executive by enhancing its ability to gather intelligence and conduct surveillance, placing a wide array of tools to the prosecution’s disposal that include new crimes not defined by the constitution, enhanced penalties longer limitation statuses, amongst others. As it inflates these powers of the executive, the Patriotic Act in addition insulates the exercise of these new powers of from meaningful Congressional and judicial oversight. With the presence, the word democracy almost finds zero meaning in the American Government.
- Another political implication of the Patriotic Act relates to immigration. The act can be seen to be a deprivation of immigrant’s due process of nationalization into the American society. First, section 411 of this Patriotic Act hugely expands the classification of immigrants that are subject to deportation or removal from the American land on the grounds of terrorism. The authority of the attorney general is enormously expanded such that he can freely detain the immigrants that he suspects to be engaged in terrorism as their deportation and removal proceedings are ongoing (Jaeger et al, 2004). Immigrants in America who take part in political activities organized by political organizations that have previously committed law violations are at a risk of being deemed as terrorist, being placed in mandatory detention, being removed or even deported. This may be either on terrorism grounds or on technical immigration violations. Protecting the American citizens from both domestic and especially foreign threat is of critical importance. The government has an enormous part to play on this. This protection does not however mean oppressing those who wish to immigrate to their beautiful country and causing them havoc simply because they are foreigners. If the governments of other countries deems that the American government is oppressing their citizens, this will lead to heightened tension in the global political arena (Ewing, 2001).
References
Etzioni, A. (2004). How patriotic is the Patriot Act?: Freedom versus security in the age of terrorism. New York: Routledge.
Ewing, A. B. (2002). The USA Patriot Act. New York: Novinka Books.
Chang, N. (2001). The USA PATRIOT Act: What's So Patriotic About Trampling on the Bill of Rights? (1). Center for Constitutional Rights.
Jaeger, P. T., McClure, C. R., Bertot, J. C., & Snead, J. T. (2004). The USA PATRIOT Act, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and Information Policy Research in Libraries: Issues, Impacts, and Questions for Libraries and Researchers. Library Quarterly, 12(33), 61-72.
Kranich, N. (2009, October 2). The Impact of the USA PATRIOT Act: An Update. Retrieved March 18, 2014, from http://www.fepproject.org/commentaries/patriotactupdate.html
Lake, G. (2010, March 2). The International Political Review » The USA Patriot Act and Justice. Retrieved 18, 2014, from http://www.theinternationalpoliticalreview.com/the-usa-patriot-act-and-justice/
USA PATRIOT ACT. (2014). Retrieved March 18, 2014, from http://usbillofrights.org/patact.html
