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To: BroJoeK; HandyDandy
I confess, I had to look it up, had no idea. But won't spoil it for everybody else... it's well worth the effort.

Endorsed

19 posted on 02/05/2017 9:49:14 AM PST by Homer_J_Simpson ("Every nation has the government that it deserves." - Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821))
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To: Homer_J_Simpson; BroJoeK
Ok, times up! The answer is that those words were spoken by the man who was at that time the Attorney General (1831 - 1833) for President Andrew Jackson. That man was none other than Roger B. Taney, who, some 30 odd years later, as Chief Justice of The Supreme Court of The United States would author the Dred Scott Decision. He was expressing the view commonly held by democrats back during the time of Jackson that they did not believe an interpretation of the Constitution by Supreme Court was permanently binding.

The correct wrong guess would have obviously been Abraham Lincoln who paraphrased those words in his first inaugural address. Surely, Taney, who had just administered the oath of office to Lincoln must have squirmed in his seat as Abe delivered his address and made Taney eat his own words. Abe put it thusly:

"............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. And while it is obviously possible that such decision may be erroneous in any given case, still the evil effect following it, being limited to that particular case, with the chance that it may be overruled and never become a precedent for other cases, can better be borne than could the evils of a different practice. 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. Nor is there in this view any assault upon the court or the judges. It is a duty from which they may not shrink to decide cases properly brought before them, and it is no fault of theirs if others seek to turn their decisions to political purposes."

20 posted on 02/07/2017 1:49:24 PM PST by HandyDandy (Are we our own rulers?,.......or are we ruled by the judiciary?)
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