Post by subdjoe on Oct 31, 2008 21:25:54 GMT -5
The very purpose of the Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One's right to life, liberty and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcomes of no elections.
JACKSON, U.S. SUPREME COURT JUSTICE ROBERT H., West Virginia Board of Education vs. Barnette (1943)
genuine jurisprudence of "original intent," with respect to the Constitution would have to recognize the principles of the Declaration of Independence as the principles of the Constitution. The Constitution...is a bundle of compromises. There is no way, from the text of the Constitution alone, that one can distinguish those provisions which are consistent with its principles, and which implement those principles...from those that are compromises with those same principles (e.g. the security given to property in human chattels).
JAFFA, HARRY V., Storm Over the Constitution (1999)
A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular, and what no just government should refuse to rest on inference.
JEFFERSON, THOMAS, Letter to James Madison, December 20, 1787
I see...with the deepest affliction, the rapid strides with which the federal branch of our government is advancing towards the usurpation of all the rights reserved to the States, and the consolidation in itself of all powers, foreign and domestic...aided by a little sophistry on the words ‘general welfare,’ a right to do, not only the acts to effect that, which are specifically enumerated and permitted, but whatsoever they shall think, or pretend will be for the general welfare.
JEFFERSON, THOMAS, Letter to W. B. Giles, 1825
JACKSON, U.S. SUPREME COURT JUSTICE ROBERT H., West Virginia Board of Education vs. Barnette (1943)
genuine jurisprudence of "original intent," with respect to the Constitution would have to recognize the principles of the Declaration of Independence as the principles of the Constitution. The Constitution...is a bundle of compromises. There is no way, from the text of the Constitution alone, that one can distinguish those provisions which are consistent with its principles, and which implement those principles...from those that are compromises with those same principles (e.g. the security given to property in human chattels).
JAFFA, HARRY V., Storm Over the Constitution (1999)
A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular, and what no just government should refuse to rest on inference.
JEFFERSON, THOMAS, Letter to James Madison, December 20, 1787
I see...with the deepest affliction, the rapid strides with which the federal branch of our government is advancing towards the usurpation of all the rights reserved to the States, and the consolidation in itself of all powers, foreign and domestic...aided by a little sophistry on the words ‘general welfare,’ a right to do, not only the acts to effect that, which are specifically enumerated and permitted, but whatsoever they shall think, or pretend will be for the general welfare.
JEFFERSON, THOMAS, Letter to W. B. Giles, 1825