Ex Parte Milligan - Concurrence

Concurrence

Five justices signed the majority opinion, with four others, Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase and Justices Wayne, Swayne and Miller, concurring in the judgment but dissenting as to the Court's assertion that Congress did not have the power to authorize military commissions in Indiana. Chief Justice Chase asserted that the power of Congress “to authorize trials for crimes against the security and safety of the national forces, may be derived from its constitutional power to raise and support armies and to declare war”; and that while the civil courts “might be open and undisturbed in their functions . . . yet wholly incompetent to avert threatened danger, or to punish, with adequate promptitude and certainty, the guilty conspirators.”