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Buckle up! A 199-year-old law is being dusted off and is ready for a summer of riots and insurrection.

Here is the power. In 1827, the Supreme Court issued a decision in the case Martin v. Mott that addressed a fundamental question: who determines when an emergency exists that justifies calling state militias into federal service?

The dispute arose during the War of 1812. President James Madison, acting under the Militia Act of 1795, directed New York to mobilize its militia against the threat of British invasion. Jacob Mott, a private in the New York militia, refused the order to assemble. He was court-martialed, fined, and saw his property seized when he failed to pay. Mott challenged the action, arguing that the president lacked unilateral authority to decide when such a call-up was justified and that ordinary citizens or state officers could second-guess the determination.

Justice Joseph Story, writing for a unanimous Court, rejected that view.

He held that “the authority to decide whether the exigency has arisen belongs exclusively to the President, and that his decision is conclusive upon all other persons.”

Story reasoned that the power Congress had granted the President was of a “high and delicate nature.” Allowing every officer or militiaman to contest the president’s judgment would undermine the very purpose of the statute and the president’s role as commander in chief. The Court emphasized that the statute made the president the sole judge of the existence of the facts triggering the power.

That principle has never been overturned. Legal scholars and later courts have cited Martin v. Mott in discussions of the Insurrection Act of 1807 and related statutes that authorize the president to deploy federal forces or federalize National Guard units to suppress insurrection, rebellion, or domestic violence that obstructs the enforcement of federal law. The ruling is often understood to give the executive substantial, and in many interpretations near-conclusive, deference in determining whether the statutory conditions have been met.

In the current political climate, the precedent has drawn renewed attention. Supporters of expansive executive authority point to it as evidence that a president may act decisively without needing prior approval from Congress or the courts.

Recent lower-court litigation over National Guard deployments has already seen Martin v. Mott invoked on both sides of the argument.

Nearly two centuries later, the 1827 decision remains a cornerstone of the legal framework governing presidential emergency powers and may come in handy if there is a Muslim Communist uprising this summer.