Justice Jackson and Donald Trump on the Constitution as a Suicide Pact

July 17th, 2016

Terminiello v. Chicago (Jackson, J., dissenting):

This Court has gone far toward accepting the doctrine that civil liberty means the removal of all restraints from these crowds and that all local attempts to maintain order are impairments of the liberty of the citizen. The choice is not between order and liberty. It is between liberty with order and anarchy without either. There is danger that, if the Court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact.

Donald J. Trump on his immigration ban from predominantly-Muslim nations:

“So you call it territories. OK? We’re going to do territories. We’re going to not let people come in from Syria that nobody knows who they are,” Trump said. “The Constitution — there’s nothing like it. But it doesn’t necessarily give us the right to commit suicide, as a country, OK? And I’ll tell you this: Call it whatever you want, change territories, but there are territories and terror states and terror nations that we’re not going to allow the people to come into our country. And we’re going to have a thing called ‘extreme vetting.’ And if people want to come in, there’s going to be extreme vetting.”

I genuinely wonder if someone gave him Jackson’s quote, and he was trying to reference it. Or maybe I’m giving him too much credit.