Horace Harmon Lurton Quotes
The contention that...the Constitution is to be disregarded if it stands in the way of that which is deemed of the public advantage...is destructive of the whole theory upon which our American Commonwealths have been founded.
Horace Harmon Lurton, 1844–1914, Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court, North American Review, 1911
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
One of the conundrums of our constitutional system is who has the last word as to what the Constitution means. Essentially it is the judicial branch headed by the Supreme Court. But there are those who believe that the current popular majority should have a say in what is or is not constitutional. If so the legislative branch should have the last word. Still others say that the President is the only person elected by ALL the people, so his opinion most reflects the will of the public. And then there are most who argue that the Constitutional system was created just to avoid the power of currently popular majorities, and the courts should decide based on the Constitution itself. So the statement has very little meaning except that Phillips thinks that the courts have too much power. Whoever gets to decide what is or is not Constitutional will be accused of being “over” the Constitution by those who don’t like the decisions. In our system, that is the courts.
In a 1949 dissenting opinion in Terminiello v. Chicago Jackson claimed the majority view would “convert the Bill of Rights into a suicide pact.”
Horace Harmon Lurton was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States and previously was a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and of the United States Circuit Courts for the Sixth Circuit. At age 65, Lurton was the oldest Justice to be appointed to the Supreme Court for the first time.
