Constitutional Obligations Quotes
America’s first political economist. This is a wonderful quotation which shows the compromises that even a great president like Abraham Lincoln had to act when Congress passed must have bills.
The Presidential election of 1800 produced a crisis even greater than that of 2000. There was an Electoral College tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr—both of the same party, Democratic Republicans. The Federalist Party led by President John Adams had been totally rejected by the voters and Adams was in third place. However, the Federalists saw an opportunity of maintaining the Presidency anyway. The Constitution threw the election into the House of Representatives with each State delegation having a single vote. In the House, the Federalists had parity with Jefferson’s party which resulted in 35 tie votes. Finally, Congressman Bayard, the sole Congressman from Delaware, withheld his vote on the 36th ballot, thereby electing Thomas Jefferson of the opposition party. His reason was:
The Supreme Court was hearing a petition of IRAC, an Israeli, civil and women's rights advocacy organization. The Government had turned over the Wailing Wall, the holiest entity in Jerusalem for Jews, ultra orthodox Jews to manage. These particular Jews believed that it was prohibited for a woman to pray at the Wall or read from the Torah of have religious ceremonies at the wall as men did daily, And they would not even allow women to enter the area where the men prayed. They even allowed private orthodox fanatics and thugs to beat women who tried to lead prayers in the public areas near the Wall. IRAQ had previously won a Supreme Court Decision that the Government had to either integrate the existing are or create a separate area where women could have access to practice their religion as they saw fit. By January 2016, the government finally proposed a compromise that included establishing a fully funded government recognized egalitarian prayer space at the Western Wall. However when it came time to implement the agreement, the political situation was that the Benjamin Netanyahu Government found itself in a difficult situation. It was a coalition government that depended open the ultra religious Jewish Political Party for its majority. And the latter were adamant that the government should not go ahead with the agreement it proposed and was ordered by the court. Go the government did nothing. In September of 2016, IRAQ petitioned the Supreme Court to intervene and order the implementation. The government’s attorney at the hearing argued that implementing the agreement would cause the government to fall at a time where Israel needed a strong government to deal with its enemies. The Chief Justice then made the statement of the quotation and instructed the attorney to give the message to the Prime Minister.
What makes this quotation so historically interesting is that the abiding by the Supreme Court’s decisions on constitutionality was even an issue. It was because of the terrible Dred Scott decision which required Northern States to return fugitive slaves to their owners despite the constitutions of those states which stated that all men were free. A substantial part of the Democratic Party was the “solid South” and the return of fugitive slaves was one of the major issues of the 1860 Presidential Election. Ironically, the Southern States were arguing AGAINST states’ rights when the Northern States’ laws and Constitutions made fugitive slaves free the minute they set foot in the state.
The Chief Justice at the time was an ultra-conservative judge, who together with his 8 colleagues—all conservative—had blocked much of the democratic and progressive legislation that the Congress had passed. FDR had a much different legal and philosophical view of the Constitution than the Chief Justice, and the court would declare much of his New Deal legislation, passed in the emergency of the Great Depression, unconstitutional. Almost all of those “unconstitutional” things were years later passed again and this time a more modern court found they were Constitutional.
In recent years, presidents of both parties have refused to allow Congress in its oversight responsibility to question certain assistants or see certain documents that are not technically national secrets. The questionable legal principle, executive privilege, supposedly assures that the President can get honest confidential advice without the advice giver feeing intimidated that the advice will become public. However, Presidents have also used this principle to cover-up scandals, wrong doing, and incompetence. Since the President simply asserts the “privilege” there is no way of checking in any particular case to determine if it is an abuse or not.
Speaking then as a congressman:. those of the voters of a particular district
