Robert H. Jackson Quotes
Time has proved that the Supreme Court’s judgment was wrong on the most outstanding issues upon which it chose to challenge the popular branches
In general, Justice Jackson was correct. Almost all major Supreme Court decisions that have ruled against the Legislative Branch or the Executive Branch, have been, reversed by a future Supreme Court, reversed by new legislation, reversed by a subsequent Constitutional Amendment, reversed by science or technology, or acknowledged by future generations to be wrong but were now moot and needed no correcting. The greatest of the Supreme Court decisions have generally been those that upheld the Congress and the Executive.
Robert Houghwout Jackson, 1892-1954, Chief Prosecutor, Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, U. S. Attorney General (Democrat), U. S. Supreme Court Justice, Statement shortly before he himself was appointed to the Supreme Court, The Struggle for Judicial Supremacy,1941
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The New Deal liberal Democrats had complained that the Supreme Court was making national policy and law and not interpreting law. They tried to pack the Supreme Court by adding more justices who would be more sympathetic to the New Deal. (See {587549}.) At the beginning of the 21st century it was the conservative Republicans who were making the same claim that the Supreme Court was making law and not interpreting it. The pattern seems to be when the court votes for your side, they are interpreting the law. When they vote for the other side, they are activist—making law improperly.
The view that the Supreme Court was the final arbiter of constitutional controversies was not held in early America.
Jefferson’s fears were later reinforced by John Marshall in Marbury v. Madison {606468}
Hatch was the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee at the time.
In 2002 the corrupt Indonesian Courts ruled that a very solvent Canadian company Manulife was bankrupt so that others could get control. The international financial and political community wanted the Indonesian government to intervene and reverse the rulings, but historically the courts had no independence and had been tools of the government.
His role was the equivalent of the Mayor of Washington DC. Even though the Congress had generally been the most powerful branch of the government, public opinion on this was beginning to shift at the turn of the 20th century.
Robert Houghwout Jackson was an American attorney and judge who served as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. He had previously served as United States Solicitor General and United States Attorney General, and is the only person to have held all three of those offices. Jackson was also notable for his work as Chief United States Prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals following World War II.
