So far as I know, the US Constitution and laws do not allow for martial law.
Hi waybread,
Yes, it certainly does. The US Supreme Court has so stated on numerous occasions.
The body of the Constitution does five things:
1) establishes a republican form of government and guarantees that each State will have a republican form of government
2) establishes a federal system as opposed to a confederacy or unitary-State
3) creates a system of Checks & Balances between the federal government, the States and the People
4) creates a system of Checks & Balances among the three branches of the federal government
5) states the duties, responsibilities, power and authority of each branch of government.
The Amendments to the Constitution either place restrictions and limitations on government power, or grant the government certain powers.
Until the 14th Amendment, the Constitution did not apply to the States. It only applied to the federal government.
The US is a sovereign State and a sovereign State has certain inherent powers. To enumerate those powers in the Constitution would make it about 16,000 to 20,000 pages long.
Likewise, the head-of-State has certain inherent powers and to enumerate them would add another 15,000 pages to the Constitution.
A more elegant way of writing a Constitution is simply to assume those powers and place limitations or restrictions upon them as desired.
For example, it is an inherent power of the head-of-State to declare war, but the Framers saw fit to give that power to the combined House and Senate: the People and the States, since the House originally represented the People and the Senate represented the States.
Dalton v. Specter, 511 US 462 (1994)
Held: Judicial review is not available for respondents' claims. Every action by the President, or by another elected official, in excess of his statutory authority is not ipso facto in violation of the Constitution, as the Court of Appeals seemed to believe.
Not only does a US President have inherent powers, so do cabinet members, in this instance the Secretary of Defense.
Each cabinet member by virtue of his/her position has certain inherent powers which are not subject to judicial review, even though those powers are not enumerated in the Constitution, because that would add another 200,000 pages to the Constitution to enumerate all of their inherent powers.
The US Constitution does not say that the Secretary of Defense has the power to decide which military bases will be opened or closed or remain in operation, because that is a power inherent to the position.
The courts have no power to do anything about it, and neither does Congress, since all things military excepting a declaration of war are vested in the Executive Branch.
That's how it works.
Any President as head-of-State or Commander-in-Chief or Chief Law Enforcement Officer has the power to declare a federal emergency or martial law or both and the courts and Congress can do nothing about it.
The only way that will change is with an Amendment to the Constitution that restricts or limits those powers.