Robert H. Jackson Quotes About Authority

• The physical power to get the money does not seem to me a test of the right to tax. Might does not make right even in taxation. To hold that what the use of official authority may get the state may keep, and that if it cannot get hold of a nonresident stockholder it may hold the company as hostage for him, is strange constitutional doctrine to me.

  →

  Robert H. Jackson

  "International Harvester Co. v. Wisconsin Dept. of Taxation, 322 U.S. 435, 450". Judicial opinion, 1944.

  1480

• Not every defeat of authority is a gain for individual freedom, nor every judicial rescue of a convict a victory for liberty.

  →

  Robert H. Jackson

  "The Task of Maintaining Our Liberties: The Role of the Judiciary". American Bar Association Journal, Volume 39, No. 11, p. 964, www.jstor.org. November 1953.

  3103

• We are not final because we are infallible, but infallible only because we are final.

  →

  Robert H. Jackson

  Brown v. Allen (concurring opinion) (1953)

  3116

• We set up government by consent of the governed, and the Bill of Rights denies those in power any legal opportunity to coerce that consent. Authority here is to be controlled by public opinion, not public opinion by authority.

  →

  Robert H. Jackson

  "West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette 319 U.S. 641". Judicial opinion, 1943.

  4933

You May Also Like:

Wiley Blount Rutledge

David Maxwell Fyfe, 1st Earl of Kilmuir

Felix Frankfurter

Hermann Goring

William Rehnquist

Franklin D. Roosevelt

James F. Byrnes

John Roberts