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The Posse Comitatus Act is a United States federal law (, original at ) signed on June 18, 1878 by President Rutherford B. Hayes. The purpose of the act – in concert with the Insurrection Act of 1807 – is to limit the powers of the federal government in using federal military personnel to enforce domestic policies within the United States. It was passed as an amendment to an army appropriation bill following the end of Reconstruction, and was subsequently updated in 1956 and 1981. The Act only specifically applies to the United States Army and, as amended in 1956, the United States Air Force. While the Act does not explicitly mention the United States Navy and the United States Marine Corps, due to them being naval services, the Department of the Navy has prescribed regulations that are generally construed to give the Act force with respect to those services as well. The Act does not apply to the Army and Air National Guard under state authority from acting in a law enforcement capacity within its home state or in an adjacent state if invited by that state's governor. The United States Coast Guard, which operates under the Department of Homeland Security, is not covered by the Posse Comitatus Act either, primarily because although the Coast Guard is an armed service, it also has both a maritime law enforcement mission and a federal regulatory agency mission. ==History== The Act, 15 of the appropriations bill for the Army for 1879, found at , was a response to, and subsequent prohibition of, the military occupation of the former Confederate States by the United States Army during the ten years of Reconstruction (1867–1877) following the American Civil War (1861–1865). The president withdrew federal troops from the Southern States as a result of a compromise in one of the most disputed national elections in American history, the 1876 U.S. presidential election. Samuel J. Tilden of New York, the Democratic candidate, defeated Republican candidate Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio in the popular vote. Tilden garnered 184 electoral votes to Hayes' 165; 20 disputed electoral votes remained uncounted. After a bitter fight, Congress struck a deal resolving the dispute and awarded the presidency to Hayes. In return for Southern acquiescence regarding Hayes, Republicans agreed to support the withdrawal of federal troops from the former Confederate states, formally ending Reconstruction. Known as the Compromise of 1877, South Carolina, Florida and Louisiana agreed to certify Rutherford B. Hayes as the President in exchange for the removal of Federal troops from the South.〔("The Posse Comitatus Act ): Setting the recordstraight on 124 years of mischief and misunderstanding before any more damage is done," ''Military Law Review'', Vol. 175, 2003.〕 The U.S. Constitution places primary responsibility for the holding of elections in the hands of the individual states. The maintenance of peace, conduct of orderly elections, and prosecution of unlawful actions are all state responsibilities, pursuant of any state's role of exercising police power and maintaining law and order, whether part of a wider federation or a unitary state. During the local, state, and federal elections of 1874 and 1876 in the former Confederate states, all levels of government chose not to exercise their police powers to maintain law and order.〔 Some historians have concluded most Reconstruction governments did not have the power to suppress the violence. The violence and fraud related to elections had been increasing since 1868, with disruption of Republican meetings, killing and intimidation of many blacks, and a suppression of the black vote by paramilitary groups such as the Red Shirts in Mississippi and the Carolinas, and the White League in Louisiana, in addition to armed white men of what were called rifle clubs. The scale of these is suggested by the fact that in North Carolina, 20,000 white men belonged to rifle clubs, and many others to the Red Shirts. These groups have been described as the "military arm of the Democratic Party" at that time in the South.〔George C. Rable, ''But There Was No Peace: The Role of Violence in the Politics of Reconstruction'', Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1984, p. 132〕 White Democrats regained control of all Southern state legislatures by 1876. They also elected Democratic U.S. congressmen from the South; together, these politicians halted and reversed political reforms related to the inclusion of freedmen in the political system in the American South,〔 and worked to restore white supremacy. When the U.S. Representatives and Senators from the former Confederate states reached Washington, they set as a priority legislation to prohibit any future President or Congress from directing, by military order or federal legislation, the imposition of federal troops in any U.S. state. By the 1878 election, Congress was dominated by the Democratic Party, and they passed the Posse Comitatus Act in 1878. In the mid-20th century, the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower used an exception to the Posse Comitatus Act, derived from the Enforcement Acts, to send federal troops into Little Rock, Arkansas, during the 1957 school desegregation crisis. The Arkansas governor had opposed desegregation after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1954 in the ''Brown v. Board of Education'' that segregated public schools were unconstitutional. The Enforcement Acts, among other powers, allow the President to call up military forces when state authorities are either unable or unwilling to suppress violence that is in opposition to the constitutional rights of the people. The original Posse Comitatus Act referred essentially to the United States Army. The United States Air Force was added in 1956, and the United States Navy and the United States Marine Corps have been included by a regulation of the United States Department of Defense. This law is often relied upon to prevent the Department of Defense from interfering in domestic law enforcement.〔(Mazzetti, Mark and Johnston, David. "Bush Weighed Using Military in Arrests" ), ''New York Times,'' 24 July 2009〕 The United States Coast Guard is not included in the Act even though it is one of the five armed services because it is not a part of the Department of Defense. At the time the Act became law, the Coast Guard was part of the United States Department of the Treasury, and was thus exempt.〔http://www.uscg.mil/History/articles/LEDET_History.asp Coast Guard Law Enforcement Detachments (LEDETs): A History〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Posse Comitatus Act」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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