Once again you are simply wrong. Article I, Section 1 makes it indisputable that the power belongs to Congress.
In matters where actions or laws seem to conflict with the Constitution then it is up to the Supreme Court to decide whether those actions or laws have, in fact, violated the Constitution.
...if, that is, the supreme court's ruling is rendered necessary by the appeals process. Alternatively, a lower federal court can settle the matter of constitutionality so long as its ruling is not appealed. I know of no record indicating that Lincoln ever appealed any of the rulings against him on habeas corpus. Do you?
No, you are the one who is incorrect. Article I is silent on who may suspend habeas corpus. It only covers the conditions under which it can be suspended.
Alternatively, a lower federal court can settle the matter of constitutionality so long as its ruling is not appealed.
No, a lower court may determine constitutionality if the Supreme Court declines to take their ruling under consideration. At that time, the lower court decision is accepted as the opinion of the Supreme Court.
How do we know this? Because the part of the CSA constitution that covers this is directly copied (with a few minor changes) from the U.S. Constitution! Now, in Davis' case, he had the blessing of Congress. But the fact is that, according to Taney, Congress can't delegate the Writ to the president or the military! What a laugher!
Consider this text: [used by permission]
"Taney's opinion in the Merryman case hardly supports your argument: Taney's first point finds all of Davis' later actions on the subject illegal, as the following excerpt shows: "First, the President, under the Constitution and laws of the United States, can not suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, nor authorize any military officer to do so." In other words, Taney believed that only Congress had that power and could not legally delegate it to the President or any other agency of government. Thus, if you take the Taney opinion to be the law of the land, then Davis' actions were as illegal as Lincoln's were.
But the Merryman case was not a Supreme Court case involving interpretation by the whole court of a constitutional question. It was only a lower court case in which Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney rendered an ex-parte personal opinion. As such, it was not an authoritative statement of the law of the land.
In the final analysis, the constitutional power to suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus is a carefully limited emergency power. In the late 1700s when the Constitution was drafted, and in the early 1860s, communications were difficult and Congress was not in session very many weeks in any year. Accordingly, constitutional law recognized that the President had to have strong powers to act swiftly and unilaterally in response to threats to national security arising from rebellion or invasion, and in the eyes of many people the power to suspend the writ was one of those powers (the Constitution is really ambiguous on who has that power).
In the end, both contending American presidents exercized and abused that power, both delegated it to their militaries to a large extent, both unionist and secessionist populations chafed under the abuse but tolerated it as necessary to national security in wartime, and the practice of the two presidents differed only in scale --- not in principle, IMHO."
So, will you condemn Davis? Now I know this may take a few years to sink in. But by the authority most often cited to blast Lincoln, Davis is just as guilty.
Walt