No. 78
The Federalist Papers (1787–1788)
Context: There is yet a further and a weightier reason for the permanency of the Judicial offices, which is deducible from the nature of the qualifications they require. It has been frequently remarked, with great propriety, that a voluminous code of laws is one of the inconveniences necessarily connected with the advantages of a free Government. To avoid an arbitrary discretion in the Courts, it is indispensable that they should be bound down by strict rules and precedents, which serve to define and point out their duty in every particular case that comes before them; and it will readily be conceived from the variety of controversies which grow out of the folly and wickedness of mankind, that the records of those precedents must unavoidably swell to a very considerable bulk, and must demand long and laborious study to acquire a competent knowledge of them. Hence it is, that there can be but few men in the society, who will have sufficient skill in the laws to qualify them for the stations of Judges. And making the proper deductions for the ordinary depravity of human nature, the number must be still smaller of those who unite the requisite integrity with the requisite knowledge. These considerations apprize us, that the Government can have no great option between fit characters; and that a temporary duration in office, which would naturally discourage such characters from quitting a lucrative line of practice to accept a seat on the Bench, would have a tendency to throw the administration of justice into hands less able, and less well qualified, to conduct it with utility and dignity.
Occupation, vol. 3, Society in America (1837).
Letter 1
Letters on Logic: Especially Democratic-Proletarian Logic (1906)
“Freedom from lower qualities is an essential qualification required for spiritual progress.”
Source: The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004), p. 95
Source: 1850s, An Investigation of the Laws of Thought (1854), p. 42
"The Supreme Court in the Mirror of Justice," University of Pennsylvania Law Review (April, 1957), p. 786.
Other writings
"Freedom from Religion", The Nation (19 February 2001) http://www.thenation.com/article/freedom-religion/
Context: A genuinely democratic society requires a secular ethos: one that does not equate morality with religion, stigmatize atheists, defer to religious interests and aims over others or make religious belief an informal qualification for public office. Of course, secularism in the latter sense is not mandated by the First Amendment. It's a matter of sensibility, not law.
17 U.S. (4 Wheaton) 316, 407
McCulloch v. Maryland (1819)
Diary (14 February 1879)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)
