"At the center of the sprawling legal battle over President Trump's domestic military deployments is a single word: rebellion. To justify sending the National Guard to Los Angeles and other cities over the outcry of local leaders, the Trump administration has cited an obscure and little-used law empowering presidents to federalize soldiers to "suppress" a rebellion, or the threat of one. But the statute does not define the word on which it turns. That's where Bryan A. Garner comes in."
"For decades, Garner has defined the words that make up the law. The landmark legal reference book he edits, Black's Law Dictionary, is as much a fixture of American courts as black robes, rosewood gavels and brass scales of justice. The dictionary is Garner's magnum opus, as essential to attorneys as Gray's Anatomy is to physicians. Now, Black's definition of rebellion is at the center of two critical pending decisions in cases from Portland, Ore., and Chicago - one currently being reheard by the 9th Circuit and the other on the emergency docket at the Supreme Court - that could unleash a flood of armed soldiers into American streets."
The legal question of whether presidents may federalize troops to 'suppress' a rebellion hinges on how 'rebellion' is defined. Black's Law Dictionary, edited by Bryan A. Garner, supplies a widely relied-upon legal definition that courts and litigants invoke. Garner's work gained influence through textualist methods and collaboration with Antonin Scalia. Two pending cases in Portland and Chicago turn on Black's definition and could authorize expanded domestic military deployments under an obscure statute. The dictionary's entry on 'rebellion' is being revised while courts consider rehearings and emergency petitions that could reshape the use of the National Guard and soldiers in U.S. cities.
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