“There is no question that this Country has faced, and will face, emergencies of every sort,” he wrote. “But the solution to a national crisis can never be permitted to supersede the commitment to individual liberty that stands as the foundation of the American experiment.”
The real tragedy here is that it has taken so long for this case to reach this point - irreparable harm has been done to the liberties of all Pennsylvanians - and in many cases irreparable harm has been done to them economically, as well - harm that could have been avoided if this matter had been taken up as an emergent matter.
I would say that we need federal legislation which commands the federal courts to take cases of this kind - involving emergency orders by not just federal officials, but specifically state and local ones, which have as one of there principal issues the liberties of American citizens - on an emergent basis, and to provide for temporary and permanent restraining orders where necessary. The job of government is, first and foremost, to protect the liberties of the people of this country - that’s in the Preamble to the Constitution, that’s the VERY REASON for our government having been established in the first place!
I would also add that no matter what the emergency is and no matter how dangerous that emergency seems, it omits still going to be less dangerous than unfettered government power. There is no entity on earth responsible for more human deaths and human suffering than governments with unlimited power. There were millions killed in Hitler’s concentration camps, the tens of millions starved by Stalin’s collectivist agricultural policies, and who knows how many millions by Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Unchecked government is always more dangerous than whatever crisis allowed that unchecked government to assume power.