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Still Thinking About the Supreme Court

 


As a new Justice named Jackson is getting used to her robes, and we all await October's first Monday, let us pay heed to an earlier generation's Justice Jackson. 

This is from the opening statement at Nuremburg, in November 1945, of the man who represented the US on the prosecution team there, Justice Robert H. Jackson (standing, in the photo). 

 What makes this inquest significant is that these prisoners represent sinister influences that will lurk in the world long after their bodies have returned to dust. We will show them to be living symbols of racial hatreds, of terrorism and violence, and of the arrogance and cruelty of power. They are symbols of fierce nationalisms and of militarism, of intrigue and war-making which have embroiled Europe generation after generation, crushing its manhood, destroying its homes, and impoverishing its life…. Civilization can afford no compromise with the social forces which would gain renewed strength if we deal ambiguously or indecisively with the men in whom those forces now precariously survive.

It is my idiosyncratic opinion, FWIW, that these words have not become irrelevant to the world of 2022. Indeed, although the word "precariously" there seems a tad optimistic, I would not otherwise tamper with it. 

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