William O. Douglas Quotes
It is better, so the Fourth Amendment teaches us, that the guilty sometimes go free than the citizens be subject to easy arrest.
The choice is usually contrasted between guilty persons going free, rather an innocent one be adjudicated guilty. But here the justice tells us that the avoidance of an innocent person being subject to easy arrest is important enough to have a system where guilty people sometimes escape justice.
William O. Douglas, 1898-1980, U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Chairman, Security & Exchange Commission, Henry v. United States, 1959
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Note the use of the phrase “against the government.” One of the unique aspects of the American Constitution and The Bill of Rights is that the government is considered a potential and even probable infringer on the liberties of the people. It is almost as though the government was the potential enemy. Modern libertarians state this very explicitly and it is ever present in the views of both the right and left wings of American politics. Most centrists recoil at the thought that some citizens see the government as the enemy, but even in America there have been times where the government has infringed on the rights of citizens only to have the courts or future administrations and Congresses correct the error.
In the aftermath of 9-11, a few government agencies violated the law and civil rights of a number of “Muslims” and/or “Middle Eastern looking” individuals and held them incommunicado with no charges and no warrants. The rationale of those agencies is that they “could not take a chance as lives were at stake. In most major wars in America, there has been an “overreaction” by some officials.
This quotation is a great example of the difficulty of deciding some of the major Constitutional issues. Most reasonable people believe that Rehnquist certainly has a point. On the other hand, critics observe that this quotation essentially says that it is OK to convict an innocent person if it cost too much or be too much trouble to do so. Reasonable people would also agree that this objection has much merit also. So the judicial system is stuck with deciding when the cost or trouble is too much. There will never, can never, be a clear cut answer.
Many politicians were arguing that giving the intelligence agencies more power to wiretap, bug and hack into personal communications despite the 4th Amendment’s strictures argued that the public was in rational fear of terror attacks and had a right to be protected.
Rynnymede was the location in England where the Barons of the realm confronted King John and forced him to sign the Magna Carta. This was the first event that limited the powers of the King
Unfortunately there has been a history in America of some overzealous police officers and prosecutors who have gone after particular people for reasons of prejudice, politics, self aggrandisement, or honest but erroneous belief of guilt. The 4th Amendment has acted as wall in many cases, but unfortunately it is a wall that can be scaled by over zealous officials who will falsify their applications for warrants. Though not a total barrier to abuse, the 4th Amendment has been one of the major reasons that Amercans enjoy greater freedom that exists in other countries.
William Orville Douglas was an American jurist and politician who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Nominated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Douglas was confirmed at the age of 40, one of the youngest justices appointed to the court. His term, lasting 36 years and 211 days (1939–75), is the longest in the history of the Supreme Court. In 1975, Time magazine called Douglas "the most doctrinaire and committed civil libertarian ever to sit on the court."
