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[thread article] "It’s clear as day the Electoral College is, to quote the great Justice Jackson a national suicide pact, Hayes posted."
[thread article] "The media pundit’s statement referenced a quote from Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, who wrote in 1949 that the Supreme Court "will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact" if it doesn’t balance its "doctrine logic with a little practical wisdom."
[rummyfan #32] "It’s clear as day the Electoral College is, to quote the great Justice Jackson a national suicide pact,"
[KevinB #58] From the article: The media pundit’s statement referenced a quote from Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, who wrote in 1949 that the Supreme Court "will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact" if it doesn’t balance its "doctrine logic with a little practical wisdom."
[Ultra Sonic 007 #71]
So in other words, Chris Hayes mangled the quotes meaning. Figures.
/The electoral college //isn’t part of the Bill of Rights ///and Jackson’s words were from his dissent ////on the free speech case “Terminiello v. City of Chicago”
Terminiello v. City of Chicago, 337 U.S. 1, 37 (1949)
Justice Jackson did say; at page 37:
This Court has gone far toward accepting the doctrine that civil liberty means the removal of all restraints from these crowds and that all local attempts to maintain order are impairments of the liberty of the citizen. The choice is not between order and liberty. It is between liberty with order and anarchy without either. There is danger that, if the Court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact.
However, when thus citing a Supreme Court Justice, it should be noted that the quote is not from an Opinion of the Court, but is dictum from a dissenting opinion. Justice Burton joined Justice Jackson forming a two-person minority dissent.
The Electoral College is in Article 2 of the original Constitution, not in the Bill of Rights. Amendment 12 (1804) refined the procedures to be followed by the Electoral College, but said Amendment is not part of the Bill of Rights.
It is clear that Justice Jackson's two-person minority dissenting opinion said not a mumbling word about the Electoral College.
It is clear that, "It’s clear as day the Electoral College is, to quote the great Justice Jackson a national suicide pact;" is a Chris Hayes fantasy. Justice Jackson was not talking of the Electoral College at all.
Further frustrating to the Chris Hayes destruction of the American republic is the U.S. Supreme Court opinion in Bush v. Gore 531 U.S. 98, 104 (2000):
The individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States unless and until the state legislature chooses a statewide election as the means to implement its power to appoint members of the Electoral College. U.S. Const., Art. II, §1. This is the source for the statement in McPherson v. Blacker, 146 U.S. 1 , 35 (1892), that the State legislature’s power to select the manner for appointing electors is plenary; it may, if it so chooses, select the electors itself, which indeed was the manner used by State legislatures in several States for many years after the Framing of our Constitution. Id., at 28—33. History has now favored the voter, and in each of the several States the citizens themselves vote for Presidential electors. When the state legislature vests the right to vote for President in its people, the right to vote as the legislature has prescribed is fundamental; and one source of its fundamental nature lies in the equal weight accorded to each vote and the equal dignity owed to each voter. The State, of course, after granting the franchise in the special context of Article II, can take back the power to appoint electors. See id., at 35 (“[T]here is no doubt of the right of the legislature to resume the power at any time, for it can neither be taken away nor abdicated”) (quoting S. Rep. No. 395, 43d Cong., 1st Sess.).
The People, if permitted by their State, vote for delegates who represent their State in the Electoral College. The States, as the members of the Union, elect the President of the United States. The Framers, in their wisdom, invented a system to prevent the more densely populated States from dominating the much vaster area of lightly populated states.
According to Article 7, "The ratification of the conventions of nine states, shall be sufficient for the establishment of this Constitution between the states so ratifying the same."
The Union is a union of States. Nothing whatever has ever been decided by a consolidated national referendum of the people of the States. At no time in the nation's history have the individual citizens had a right to vote in the election of delegates to the Electoral College. Such voting is a privilege granted by the State legislatures, a privilege the legislatures could revoke if they so choose.
There was no consolidated vote of the people to create the Constitution, and there is no consolidated vote of the people to amend the Constitution. It takes three-fourths of the States, not three fourths of the people.
The change they desire is to make the urban areas king, and the rural areas powerless.
CA, TX, FL, NY, PA, IL, OH, GA, NC, MI 179,936,948
How does one get the other 40 states to vote themselves into being vassal states. Actually, the first nine, at 169,902,835, hold a majority of the population.
The urban areas contain over 80% of the population. Just think of the benefits they can vote for Panem.