Source: Liberal Currents
by Patrick J Sobkowski
“In 1949, Justice Robert Jackson warned that ‘doctrinaire logic’ by the Supreme Court would ‘convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact.’ In that case, Terminiello v. Chicago, the Supreme Court reversed the conviction of Arthur Terminiello. Terminiello was a suspended Catholic priest and a rabid antisemite who was convicted of violating a Chicago ordinance against ‘breach of peace.’ … Ironically, Jackson’s warning to the majority in Terminiello has proved prescient, as the Roberts Court has interpreted the Constitution to enshrine vast, indeed royal, prerogatives into Article II. As a result, the Court has aggrandized its own power as well as that of the president. And the end result is that it is Article II, rather than the Bill of Rights, that has become a suicide pact.” (04/30/25)