Thomas
Jefferson on Judicial Tyranny
“Nothing
in the Constitution has given them [the federal judges] a right to decide
for the Executive, more than to the Executive to decide for them. . . .
The opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are
constitutional and what not, not only for themselves, in their own
sphere of action, but for the Legislature and Executive also in their
spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch.” (Letter to Abigail
Adams, September 11, 1804)
“The
original error [was in] establishing a judiciary independent of the nation,
and which, from the citadel of the law, can turn its guns on those they were
meant to defend, and control and fashion their proceedings to its own will.”
(Letter to John Wayles Eppes, 1807)
“Our
Constitution . . . intending to establish three departments, co-ordinate and
independent that they might check and balance one another, it has
given—according to this opinion to one of them alone the right to prescribe
rules for the government of others; and to that one, too, which is unelected
by and independent of the nation. . . . The Constitution, on this
hypothesis, is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they
may twist and shape into any form they please.” (Letter to Judge Spencer
Roane, Sept. 6, 1819)
“You
seem . . . to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all
constitutional questions; a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which
would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as
honest as other men, and not more so . . . and their power [is] the more
dangerous, as they are in office for life and not responsible, as the other
functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no
such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with
corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots.” (Letter to
William Jarvis, Sept. 28, 1820)
“The
judiciary of the United States is the subtle corps of sappers and miners
constantly working under ground to undermine the foundations of our
confederated fabric. They are construing our constitution from a
co-ordination of a general and special government to a general and supreme
one alone. This will lay all things at their feet, and they are too well
versed in English law to forget the maxim, ‘boni judicis est ampliare
jurisdictionem’ [good judges have ample jurisdiction]. . . . A judiciary
independent of a king or executive alone, is a good thing; but independence
of the will of the nation is a solecism, at least in a republican
government.” (Letter to Thomas Ritchie, Dec. 25, 1820)
“The
germ of dissolution of our federal government is in the constitution of the
federal Judiciary; an irresponsible body (for impeachment is scarcely a
scare-crow) working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little
today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief,
over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped.” (Letter
to Charles Hammond, August 18, 1821)
“The
great object of my fear is the Federal Judiciary. That body, like
gravity, ever acting with noiseless foot and unalarming advance, gaining
ground step by step and holding what it gains, is engulfing insidiously the
special governments into the jaws of that which feeds them.” (Letter to
Judge Spencer Roane, 1821)
“At the
establishment of our constitutions, the judiciary bodies were supposed to be
the most helpless and harmless members of the government. Experience,
however, soon showed in what way they were to become the most dangerous;
that the insufficiency of the means provided for their removal gave them a
freehold and irresponsibility in office; that their decisions, seeming
to concern individual suitors only, pass silent and unheeded by the public
at large; that these decisions, nevertheless, become law by precedent,
sapping, by little and little, the foundations of the constitution, and
working its change by construction, before any one has perceived that that
invisible and helpless worm has been busily employed in consuming its
substance. In truth, man is not made to be trusted for life if secured
against all liability to account.” (Letter to A. Coray, October 31, 1823)
“One
single object… [will merit] the endless gratitude of the society: that of
restraining the judges from usurping legislation.” (Letter to Edward
Livingston, March 25, 1825)
Compare the following
quote in Abraham Lincoln’s first inaugural address:
“…The candid citizen
must confess that if the policy of the government, upon vital
questions, affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by
decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made, in
ordinary litigation between parties, in personal actions, the people will
have ceased to be their own rulers, having, to that extent, practically
resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.”