Trump will go Duterte if a major terrorist act occurs

SUNDAY, JANUARY 08, 2017
Trump will go Duterte if a major terrorist act occurs

Re: “What lawyers don’t get about Duterte,” Opinion & Analysis, Jan 6.

It’s not only the Philippines’ president who may use the ancient tag “necessity has no law” to justify abolition of human rights. Just imagine when, inevitably, there will another terror attack in the United States on the scale of the Twin Towers of 2001, or even worse.  Can anyone doubt that president Trump’s instinct will be to abolish jury trial, authorise the arrest of suspects without number, censor the media and institute martial law?
Although it is true that the US constitution does not explicitly allow for additional presidential powers in an emergency, there are precedents.  President Roosevelt in World War II invoked special powers to detain in prison camps thousands of Japanese Americans residing on the West Coast. The Supreme Court backed him.  We should not be too confident there will be a general election in America in 2020. 
Barry Kenyon