That has always been one of my favorite Jefferson quotes. I think about it every time I see someone argue that future generations will be somehow bound to do things as we do. It comes up a lot with discussions of the national debt. In thirty years, this country will probably have a larger GDP than we have today. They will decide for themselves how to distribute that which they produce and that includes decisions as to how much of their resources they will devote to paying the debts that we create. People should give some thought to that reality when they purchase our debt. In thirty years, the people living then will determine the rules by which they live. We cannot bind them by what we do.
"I was glad to find in your book a formal contradition, at length, of the judiciary usurpation of legislative powers;"
Jefferson did not like John Marshall and Jefferson did not agree with the Supreme Court's power-grabbing decision in Marbury v. Madison. I think about Jefferson and that case every time I see someone arguing that certainly the courts should have the final word on the meaning of the natural born citizen clause. Why, that is what the courts are for!! They have to have the final say about everything.
I believe I know how Jefferson would have felt about that argument. ;-)
> ... certainly the courts should have the final word on the meaning of the natural born citizen clause.
They have only to apply it.
You are committing a fallacy here. I believe it's called the "substitution fallacy", but I don't remember for sure.
You are equating the position that laws mean something into an assertion that we want laws to be unchangeable. There is no quibble with future generation's abilities to change laws, the quibble is about doing it up front and with the consent of all relevant parties, or doing it with word twisting and deceit to thwart the original intent.
"Gay Marriage" is an example of deceit. They deliberately misinterpret thousands of years of Social and legal norms into something that it was never meant to be, and do so in a manner to deliberately thwart the will of the people.
They do this sort of thing all the time, and it mostly started with the Roosevelt Administration and his Kook judge parade.
Jefferson did not like John Marshall and Jefferson did not agree with the Supreme Court's power-grabbing decision in Marbury v. Madison.
I argue this point with a friend all the time. My position is that someone has to decide constitutionality, and who better for that task then the body tasked with weighing legal matters?
Would you give this power to the executive? Would you allow the executive branch to decide if something was constitutional or not?
How than could you stop illegal searches? All the executive has to do is declare them "not illegal."
Would you give this power to congress? They routinely make anti-constitutional laws, and don't ever seem to have the wit to realize that's what they are doing. Either that, or they just don't care.
No, the court's may abuse this power, but I don't see where else it can rest but the courts. I perceive it as being far more likely to be abused by the other branches of government than it would by the courts.
I hate the idiocy that is our modern court system, but as a foundational concept, I see the structure of our government as needing this check and from that body. I think we just need to make the courts more responsive to the people.
The founders deliberately insulated the courts from the passions of the people, but I think they did not consider the degree to which this would create these petty tyrannies and partisan results in the courts.
Ted Cruz has the right idea. Make Federal judges stand for election every six years. It may not be perfect, but I see it as better than what we have now.
"The germ of dissolution of our federal government is in...the federal judiciary;" -T.J.-