Arthur Goldberg Quotes
… while the Constitution protects against invasions of individual rights, it is not a suicide pact.
The major phrase was first used in a dissent by Justice Robert Houghwout Jackson in 1949 {633526} and later by Chief Justice Earl Warren {601702}
Arthur Goldberg, 1908-1990, U. S. Supreme Court Justice, United States Secretary of Labor (Democrat), U. S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Kennedy v. Mondosa-Martinez, 1963
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
In a 1949 dissenting opinion in Terminiello v. Chicago Jackson claimed the majority view would “convert the Bill of Rights into a suicide pact.”
Hamilton acknowledged that the major public objection to the new U. S. Constitution was its lack of a Bill of Rights, which Hamilton argued was unnecessary.
This is a classic type of fallacious political logic. The author claims that there are no powers in the constitution to make laws in a number of important areas of our society. What is true, is that there is no explicitly and uniquely specified statements in the Constitution regarding the areas he specified (and some he didn’t like education). However the power to make laws in these areas comes from the “Commerce Clause” where the Federal Government was given the power to regulate Interstate Commerce. And that is what the Federal Government does make laws about. Food that is sold in the state where it is grown is regulated by the states. But interstate agriculture is. Medicines and weapons are also sold and transported in interstate commerce. Even housing is in part covered as financing and mortgages, building materials, working conditions of the building companies are part of Interstate Commerce. A succession of Congresses have recognized this and so has every Supreme Court in our history. McManus however believes that all these legislators and judges have been wrong and worse, part of a conspiracy to subvert the Constitution. See {630683} for his tendency to see conspiracies in politics.
- Born: August 8, 1908
- Died: January 19, 1990
- Nationality: American
- Profession: Judge
Arthur Joseph Goldberg was an American statesman and jurist who served as the 9th U.S. Secretary of Labor, an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the 6th United States Ambassador to the United Nations.
