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AMERICAN IGNORANCE AND THE CONSTITUTION

On Behalf of | Mar 30, 2019 | Firm News

A Columbia Law Survey found that 32% of Americans believed that in time of war or other declared national emergency, the president may suspend the Constitution’s Bill of Rights.  In the same survey, most Americans did not know or believed the Constitution included the following statement about the proper role of government: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”

Evil flows from “allow[ing] basic constitutional rights to fall prey to momentary emergencies.  [T]he need for vigilance against unconstitutional excess is great. History teaches that grave threats to liberty often come in times of urgency, when constitutional rights seem too extravagant to endure. The World War II relocation camp cases, and the Red scare and McCarthy-era internal subversion cases, are only the most extreme reminders that, when we allow fundamental freedoms to be sacrificed in the name of real or perceived exigency, we invariably come to regret it.”  Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives’ Association, 489 U.S. 602, 635-38 (1989) (Justice Thurgood Marshall,dissent)