| The thundering silence of Rule 1.6 is not due to a general lack of awareness of the problem, but rather reflects a deeply imbedded fear that such a matter is the dirtiest of linen that should not be displayed in public. |
The system of justice will either protect citizens from tyranny or be one means by which tyranny is exercised over them. Thomas Jefferson
'All the tranquility, the happiness and security of mankind rest on justice, on the obligation to respect the rights of others.'" --Thomas Jefferson: Opinion on French Treaties, 1793
"No nation however powerful, any more than an individual, can be unjust with impunity. Sooner or later, public opinion, an instrument merely moral in the beginning, will find occasion physically to inflict its sentences on the unjust... The lesson is useful to the weak as well as the strong." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1804
"No nation can answer for perfect exactitude of proceedings in all their inferior courts. It suffices to provide a supreme judicature where all error and partiality will be ultimately corrected." --Thomas Jefferson to George Hammond, 1792.
"The law of self-preservation overrules the laws of obligation in others." --Thomas Jefferson: Opinion on French Treaties, 1793
"The dignity and stability of government in all its branches, the morals of the people and every blessing of society depend so much upon an upright and skillful administration of justice, that the judicial power ought to be distinct from both the legislative and executive and independent upon both, that so it may be a check upon both, as both should be checks upon that." --Thomas Jefferson to George Wythe, 1776
"At the establishment of our Constitutions, the judiciary bodies were supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of the government. Experience, however, soon showed in what way they were to become the most dangerous; that the insufficiency of the means provided for their removal gave them a freehold and irresponsibility in office; that their decisions, seeming to concern individual suitors only, pass silent and unheeded by the public at large; that these decisions nevertheless become law by precedent, sapping by little and little the foundations of the Constitution and working its change by construction before any one has perceived that that invisible and helpless worm has been busily employed in consuming its substance. In truth, man is not made to be trusted for life if secured against all liability to account." --Thomas Jefferson to A. Coray, 1823.
"I do not charge the judges with wilful and ill-intentioned error; but honest error must be arrested where its toleration leads to public ruin. As for the safety of society, we commit honest maniacs to Bedlam; so judges should be withdrawn from their bench whose erroneous biases are leading us to dissolution. It may, indeed, injure them in fame or in fortune; but it saves the republic, which is the first and supreme law." --Thomas Jefferson: Autobiography, 1821.
"This member of the Government was at first considered as the most harmless and helpless of all its organs. But it has proved that the power of declaring what the law is, ad libitum, by sapping and mining slyly and without alarm the foundations of the Constitution, can do what open force would not dare to attempt." --Thomas Jefferson to Edward Livingston, 1825
"The judges certainly have more frequent occasion to act on constitutional questions, because the laws of meum and tuum and of criminal action, forming the great mass of the system of law, constitute their particular department. When the legislative or executive functionaries act unconstitutionally, they are responsible to the people in their elective capacity. The exemption of the judges from that is quite dangerous enough... The people themselves,... [with] their discretion [informed] by education, [are] the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power." --Thomas Jefferson to William C. Jarvis, 1820.
"[How] to check these unconstitutional invasions of... rights by the Federal judiciary? Not by impeachment in the first instance, but by a strong protestation of both houses of Congress that such and such doctrines advanced by the Supreme Court are contrary to the Constitution; and if afterwards they relapse into the same heresies, impeach and set the whole adrift. For what was the government divided into three branches, but that each should watch over the others and oppose their usurpations?" --Thomas Jefferson to Nathaniel Macon, 1821.
"So long as [the principles of our revolution] prevail, we are safe from everything which can assail us from without or within." --Thomas Jefferson to William Lambert, 1810.
"[When] corruption.. has prevailed in those offices [of]... government and [has] so familiarized itself as that men otherwise honest could look on it without horror,... [then we must] be alive to the suppression of this odious practice and... bring to punishment and brand with eternal disgrace every man guilty of it, whatever be his station." --Thomas Jefferson to W. C. C. Claiborne, 1804.
'When once a republic is corrupted, there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils but by removing the corruption and restoring its lost principles; every other correction is either useless or a new evil.'" --Thomas Jefferson
"Whenever our affairs go obviously wrong, the good sense of the people will interpose and set them to rights." --Thomas Jefferson to David Humphreys, 1789.
"One single object... [will merit] the endless gratitude of society: that of restraining the judges from usurping legislation." --Thomas Jefferson to Edward Livingston, 1825
