| "It is not the function of our government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error." --Justice Robert H. Jackson |
QUOTES:
Frank Herbert: "Laws to suppress tend to strengthen what they would prohibit. This is the fine point on which all the legal professions of history
have based their job security."
"Those rights, then, which God and nature have established, and are therefore called natural rights, such as life and liberty, need not the aid of
human laws to be more effectually invested in every man than they are; neither do they receive any additional strength when declared by the
municipal laws to be inviolate. On the contrary, no human legislature has power to abridge or destroy them, unless the owner shall himself commit
some act that amounts to a forfeiture."
--Sir William Blackstone
"The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of
government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for
something they can't get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by
looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods." [H.
L. Mencken]
GEORGE WASHINGTON'S FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS
"By the article establishing the executive department it is made the duty of the President 'to recommend to your consideration such measures as he
shall judge necessary and expedient.' The circumstances under which I now meet you will acquit me from entering into that subject further than to
refer to the great constitutional charter under which you are assembled, and which, in defining your powers, designates the objects to which your
attention is to be given. It will be more consistent with those circumstances, and far more congenial with the feelings which actuate me, to
substitute, in place of a recommendation of particular measures, the tribute that is due to the talents, the rectitude, and the patriotism which adorn
the characters selected to devise and adopt them. In these honorable qualifications I behold the surest pledges that as on one side no local
prejudices or attachments, no separate views nor party animosities, will misdirect the comprehensive and equal eye which ought to watch over this
great assemblage of communities and interests, so, on another, that the foundation of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable
principles of private morality, and the preeminence of free government be exemplified by all the attributes which can win the affections of its
citizens and command the respect of the world. I dwell on this prospect with every satisfaction which an ardent love for my country can inspire,
since there is no truth more thoroughly established than that there exists in the economy and course of nature an indissoluble union between virtue
and happiness; between duty and advantage; between the genuine maxims of an honest and magnanimous policy and the solid rewards of public
prosperity and felicity; since we ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that
disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained; and since the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the
destiny of the republican model of government are justly considered, perhaps, as deeply, as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands
of the American people."
-George Washington First Inaugural Address, April 30, 1789
"The big question to ask about proposals for new laws and policies is not whether they sound reasonable, but what damage they can do when they
are used unreasonably." -Thomas Sowell
Alexander Hamilton, collected in Federalist Paper 28, originally in the 10 January, 1788, "Daily Advertiser":
"If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no resource left but in the exertion of that original right of
self-defence which is paramount to all positive forms of government, and which against the usurpations of the national rulers, may be exerted with
infinitely better prospect of success than against the rulers of an individual state. In a single state, if the persons entrusted with supreme power
become usurpers, the different parcels, subdivisions, or districts of which it consists, having no distinct government in each, can take no regular
measures for defense. The citizens must rush tumultuously to arms, without concert, without system, without resource; except in their courage and
despair."
Montesquieu: "The deterioration of a government begins almost always by a decay of its principles."
Alexander Hamilton, Federalist Paper 79 (regarding payment of Judges):
"In the general course of human nature, A power over a man's subsistence amounts to a power over his will."
Benjamin Franklin, before the Constitutional Convention, (June 2, 1787):
"... as all history informs us, there has been in every State & Kingdom a constant kind of warfare between the governing & governed: the one
striving to obtain more for its support, and the other to pay less. And this has alone occasioned great convulsions, actual civil wars, ending either in
dethroning of the Princes, or enslaving of the people. Generally indeed the ruling power carries its point, the revenues of princes constantly
increasing, and we see that they are never satisfied, but always in want of more. The more the people are discontented with the oppression of taxes;
the greater need the prince has of money to distribute among his partisans and pay the troops that are to suppress all resistance, and enable him to
plunder at pleasure. There is scarce a king in a hundred who would not, if he could, follow the example of Pharoah, get first all the peoples money,
then all their lands, and then make them and their children servants for ever ..."
Daniel Webster: "Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was
made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They
promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters."
George Washington, Farewell Address: "Occupants of public offices love power and are prone to abuse it."
Mr. Justice Brandies of the U.S. Supreme Court has written a dissent passage in Olmstead V. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928), that is particularly
fitting to keep in mind during these times. It reads:
"Decency, security, and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the
citizen. In a government of laws, existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the
potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a
lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration
of the criminal law the end justifies the means--to declare that the government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private
criminal--would bring terrible retribution. Against that pernicious doctrine this court should resolutely set its face."
"If the policy of the government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be fixed by decisions of the supreme Court, then the people
will have ceased to be their own rulers."
--Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861:
Chief Justice Marlin T. Phelps, Arizona supreme Court:
"Nothing was further from the minds of the Framers of the Constitution, than that the supreme Court should ever make the Supreme Law of the
Land."
Justice Hugo Black, Columbia University's Charpentier Lectures (1968):
"The public welfare demands that constitutional cases must be decided according to the terms of the Constitution itself, and not according to judges'
views of fairness, reasonableness, or justice. I have no fear of constitutional amendments properly adopted, but I do fear the rewriting of the
Constitution by judges under the guise of interpretation."
Justice Hugo Black:
"... any broad unlimited power to hold laws unconstitutional because they offend what this Court conceives to be the `conscience of our people' ...
was not given by the Framers, but rather has been bestowed on the Court by the Court."
Justice John M. Harlan, US supreme Court, 1895: "We must hold firmly to the doctrine that in the courts of the United States it is the duty of
juries in criminal cases to take the law from the court, and apply that law to the facts as they find them to be from the evidence."
Justice Louis Brandeis, Olmstead vs. United States, United States supreme Court, 1928:
"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent . . . the greatest dangers to
liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding."
Justice Miller, US supreme Court, Loan Association vs. Topeka, 20 Wall (87 US) 664 (1874):
"To lay with one hand the power of government on the property of a citizen, and with the other to bestow it on favored individuals. . . is none the
less robbery because it was done under the forms of law and is called taxation."
Justice William O. Douglas:
"As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged.
And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air -- however slight -- lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness."
Chief Justice Warren Burger:
"Ours is a sick profession. [A profession marked by] incompetence, lack of training, misconduct, and bad manners. Ineptness, bungling,
malpractice, and bad ethics can be observed in court houses all over this country every day."
Prof. Abram Chayes, Harvard law school:
"[Judicial action in the last two decades] adds up to a radical transformation of the role and function of the judiciary in American life. Its chief
function now is as a catalyst of social change with judges acting as planners of large scale."
Prof. William Forrester, Cornell law school:
"The Court has assumed, gradually, the role of deciding the problems on its own and ...the American people and their selected officials gradually
have accepted the Court as the political instrument for lawmaking."
Prof. Edward S. Corwin:
"[Attorneys have been] prone to identify the judicial version of the Constitution as the authentic Constitution."
Frank Herbert: "Laws to suppress tend to strengthen what they would prohibit. This is the fine point on which all the legal professions of history
have based their job security."
"Those rights, then, which God and nature have established, and are therefore called natural rights, such as life and liberty, need not the aid of
human laws to be more effectually invested in every man than they are; neither do they receive any additional strength when declared by the
municipal laws to be inviolate. On the contrary, no human legislature has power to abridge or destroy them, unless the owner shall himself commit
some act that amounts to a forfeiture."
--Sir William Blackstone
"The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of
government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for
something they can't get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by
looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods." [H.
L. Mencken]
GEORGE WASHINGTON'S FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS
"By the article establishing the executive department it is made the duty of the President 'to recommend to your consideration such measures as he
shall judge necessary and expedient.' The circumstances under which I now meet you will acquit me from entering into that subject further than to
refer to the great constitutional charter under which you are assembled, and which, in defining your powers, designates the objects to which your
attention is to be given. It will be more consistent with those circumstances, and far more congenial with the feelings which actuate me, to
substitute, in place of a recommendation of particular measures, the tribute that is due to the talents, the rectitude, and the patriotism which adorn
the characters selected to devise and adopt them. In these honorable qualifications I behold the surest pledges that as on one side no local
prejudices or attachments, no separate views nor party animosities, will misdirect the comprehensive and equal eye which ought to watch over this
great assemblage of communities and interests, so, on another, that the foundation of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable
principles of private morality, and the preeminence of free government be exemplified by all the attributes which can win the affections of its
citizens and command the respect of the world. I dwell on this prospect with every satisfaction which an ardent love for my country can inspire,
since there is no truth more thoroughly established than that there exists in the economy and course of nature an indissoluble union between virtue
and happiness; between duty and advantage; between the genuine maxims of an honest and magnanimous policy and the solid rewards of public
prosperity and felicity; since we ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that
disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained; and since the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the
destiny of the republican model of government are justly considered, perhaps, as deeply, as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands
of the American people."
-George Washington First Inaugural Address, April 30, 1789
"The big question to ask about proposals for new laws and policies is not whether they sound reasonable, but what damage they can do when they
are used unreasonably." -Thomas Sowell
Alexander Hamilton, collected in Federalist Paper 28, originally in the 10 January, 1788, "Daily Advertiser":
"If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no resource left but in the exertion of that original right of
self-defence which is paramount to all positive forms of government, and which against the usurpations of the national rulers, may be exerted with
infinitely better prospect of success than against the rulers of an individual state. In a single state, if the persons entrusted with supreme power
become usurpers, the different parcels, subdivisions, or districts of which it consists, having no distinct government in each, can take no regular
measures for defense. The citizens must rush tumultuously to arms, without concert, without system, without resource; except in their courage and
despair."
Montesquieu: "The deterioration of a government begins almost always by a decay of its principles."
Alexander Hamilton, Federalist Paper 79 (regarding payment of Judges):
"In the general course of human nature, A power over a man's subsistence amounts to a power over his will."
Benjamin Franklin, before the Constitutional Convention, (June 2, 1787):
"... as all history informs us, there has been in every State & Kingdom a constant kind of warfare between the governing & governed: the one
striving to obtain more for its support, and the other to pay less. And this has alone occasioned great convulsions, actual civil wars, ending either in
dethroning of the Princes, or enslaving of the people. Generally indeed the ruling power carries its point, the revenues of princes constantly
increasing, and we see that they are never satisfied, but always in want of more. The more the people are discontented with the oppression of taxes;
the greater need the prince has of money to distribute among his partisans and pay the troops that are to suppress all resistance, and enable him to
plunder at pleasure. There is scarce a king in a hundred who would not, if he could, follow the example of Pharoah, get first all the peoples money,
then all their lands, and then make them and their children servants for ever ..."
Daniel Webster: "Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was
made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They
promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters."
George Washington, Farewell Address: "Occupants of public offices love power and are prone to abuse it."
Mr. Justice Brandies of the U.S. Supreme Court has written a dissent passage in Olmstead V. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928), that is particularly
fitting to keep in mind during these times. It reads:
"Decency, security, and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the
citizen. In a government of laws, existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the
potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a
lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration
of the criminal law the end justifies the means--to declare that the government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private
criminal--would bring terrible retribution. Against that pernicious doctrine this court should resolutely set its face."
"If the policy of the government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be fixed by decisions of the supreme Court, then the people
will have ceased to be their own rulers."
--Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861:
Chief Justice Marlin T. Phelps, Arizona supreme Court:
"Nothing was further from the minds of the Framers of the Constitution, than that the supreme Court should ever make the Supreme Law of the
Land."
Justice Hugo Black, Columbia University's Charpentier Lectures (1968):
"The public welfare demands that constitutional cases must be decided according to the terms of the Constitution itself, and not according to judges'
views of fairness, reasonableness, or justice. I have no fear of constitutional amendments properly adopted, but I do fear the rewriting of the
Constitution by judges under the guise of interpretation."
Justice Hugo Black:
"... any broad unlimited power to hold laws unconstitutional because they offend what this Court conceives to be the `conscience of our people' ...
was not given by the Framers, but rather has been bestowed on the Court by the Court."
Justice John M. Harlan, US supreme Court, 1895: "We must hold firmly to the doctrine that in the courts of the United States it is the duty of
juries in criminal cases to take the law from the court, and apply that law to the facts as they find them to be from the evidence."
Justice Louis Brandeis, Olmstead vs. United States, United States supreme Court, 1928:
"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent . . . the greatest dangers to
liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding."
Justice Miller, US supreme Court, Loan Association vs. Topeka, 20 Wall (87 US) 664 (1874):
"To lay with one hand the power of government on the property of a citizen, and with the other to bestow it on favored individuals. . . is none the
less robbery because it was done under the forms of law and is called taxation."
Justice William O. Douglas:
"As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged.
And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air -- however slight -- lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness."
Chief Justice Warren Burger:
"Ours is a sick profession. [A profession marked by] incompetence, lack of training, misconduct, and bad manners. Ineptness, bungling,
malpractice, and bad ethics can be observed in court houses all over this country every day."
Prof. Abram Chayes, Harvard law school:
"[Judicial action in the last two decades] adds up to a radical transformation of the role and function of the judiciary in American life. Its chief
function now is as a catalyst of social change with judges acting as planners of large scale."
Prof. William Forrester, Cornell law school:
"The Court has assumed, gradually, the role of deciding the problems on its own and ...the American people and their selected officials gradually
have accepted the Court as the political instrument for lawmaking."
Prof. Edward S. Corwin:
"[Attorneys have been] prone to identify the judicial version of the Constitution as the authentic Constitution."
| ~REPUBLIC FOR MICHIGAN ~ Know who you are "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. ." Genesis 1:27 |
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