Judge Andrew Napolitano on coronavirus restrictions: We are witnessing the slow death of civil liberties
Governors will overreach again and again until a courageous federal court or an outraged public stops them, says Fox News senior judicial analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano.
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Fox News senior judicial analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano warned Monday that governors imposing excessive restrictions amid the coronavirus pandemic are at risk of violating the Constitution and denying Americans basic freedoms.
Napolitano joined "Tucker Carlson Tonight" after host Tucker Carlson ripped Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer for expanding her state's "stay-at-home" order to prohibit residents from visiting family or holding private gatherings with friends.
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"Your analysis of Governor Whitmer could apply to nearly all the remaining 49 governors who assume that they have the power to crush individual liberties, violate the Constitution, and write laws," Napolitano told Carlson.
"We are witnessing the slow death, the death in slow motion of civil liberties."
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"They don't," Napolitano continued. "Laws in this country are written by legislative branches after public hearings and debates, so there's a transparency, so we know why she doesn't want you to buy garden hoses," a reference to Whitmer's new regulations banning the sale of paint and outdoor gardening tools among other items.
"There would have to be a rational basis to articulate it, but when the executive branch takes upon itself the role of not just enforcing the law, but of making up new ones and in the process crushes basic fundamental liberties like the right to travel and the right to worship -- never mind on Easter Sunday but -- any time you want to worship -- we are witnessing the slow death, the death in slow motion of civil liberties," Napolitano warned.
"These governors, these petty tyrants, will use this power again and again until some courageous federal court or an outraged public stops them," he added.
In a Fox News op-ed last week, Napolitano accused some state and local leaders, "particularly in the Northeast and the West Coast," of handing down "decrees that are as profoundly unconstitutional as Lincoln's efforts to silence dissent [during the Civil War]."
Napolitano said he hoped more people would understand that that "basic human liberties" can't be revoked "by the command of governor or mayor" and be outraged by what is going on.
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"Hopefully, it will be outrage stirred up by the type of reporting that you and some of our colleagues have begun to be doing," he told Carlson. "Basic human liberties are guaranteed in the Constitution. They can't even be taken away by the vote of the legislature, much less the command of a governor or a mayor."
"These executive orders look like orders and sound like orders. They are just guidelines," Napolitano added. " ... There cannot be a criminal sanction because they are at their root just the whim of those in power intended to enhance their power, but they are not valid expressions of constitutional documents."