“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...”
— Thomas Jefferson, Letter to William Jarvis, Sept. 28, 1820
“I do not forget the position assumed by some that constitutional questions are to be decided by the Supreme Court, nor do I deny that such decisions must be binding in any case upon the parties to a suit as to the object of that suit, while they are also entitled to very high respect and consideration in all parallel cases by all other departments of the Government...At the same time, 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.”
— Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address
Was that the same Thomas Jefferson who executed the Louisiana Purchase knowing he was without the Constitutional authority to do so?
And the same Lincoln who ignored the Constitutional protections of Habeas Corpus?