John Adams Quotes
The executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them, to the end that it may be a government of laws and not of men.
Adams, John. Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. 1780, Part the First, Article XXX.
This constitution was written 7 years before the national constitutional convention. It shows that there was concern about the separation of powers in United States even before the Constitution was drafted. See {616750} for an even clearer statement of the separation of powers principle.
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.
The drafters of the Constitution were well aware of this view of Montesquieu’s which was one of the main bases of separation of powers and checks and balances in America.
Actually Adams had used the phrase in 1774 writing in the Massachusetts Gazette under the pseudonym Novanglus. See James Harrington related quotes for an earlier similar expression for which Adams is sometimes credited.
Hatch was the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee at the time.
This was the origin of John Adams famous quotation {592690}.
John Adams Jr. was an American statesman, attorney, diplomat, writer, and Founding Father who served as the second president of the United States from 1797 to 1801. Before his presidency, he was a leader of the American Revolution that achieved independence from Great Britain, and he served as the first vice president of the United States. Adams was a dedicated diarist and regularly corresponded with many important figures in early American history, including his wife and adviser Abigail Adams and Thomas Jefferson.
