John Marshall Quotes
The people made the Constitution, and the people can unmake it. It is the creature of their will, and lives only by their will.
John Marshall, 1755-1835, Chief Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court, U. S. Congressman (Federalist, VA), U. S. Secretary of War, U. S. Secretary of State, 1821
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
The comment was prompted by FDR’s attempt to “pack” the Supreme Court.
The argument was Prohibition, the 18th Amendment.
The conservative Senator was very distrustful of the constitutional amendment process itself after a both prohibition and women's suffrage amendments had passed. Wadsworth and his supporters feared Constitutional amendments passed by Congress and the State legislatures without any direct approval of the people.
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For many people the implication of this quotation is that there should be no government secrets withheld from the citizens who have the right to examine. Others argue that government may have temporary secrets to protect against foreign enemies for example, but that these must be declassified very promptly so that the citizens can examine the actions of their government in time to replace the government if they are not satisfied. Almost all government officials tend to reject the first implication out of hand, and grudgingly accept the second with their discretion controlling when declassification should take place. The problem of America is twofold. There is much over-classification (material kept secret that should not be at all), and the time till declassification is long in general and truly absurd in many cases. For example, there are documents from WWII that by 2013 had still not been declassified. See {591444}, {641317}, and {589105} for exemplar views. William Jennings Bryan introduced this principle into the American political dialogue. See {641027}.
John Marshall was an American politician and lawyer who served as the fourth Chief Justice of the United States from 1801 to 1835. Marshall remains the longest-serving chief justice and fourth-longest serving justice in Supreme Court history, and he is widely regarded as one of the most influential justices to ever sit on the Supreme Court. Prior to joining the Supreme Court (and for one month simultaneous to his tenure as Chief Justice), Marshall served as the United States Secretary of State under President John Adams.
