I would not have associated the following quote with its author, a 20th century president. He’s addressing problems within the U.S. Supreme Court:
The Court, in addition to the proper use of its judicial functions, has improperly set itself up as a third house of Congress — a super-legislature, as one of the justices has called it — reading into the Constitution words and implications which are not there, and which were never intended to be there.
We have therefore reached the point as a nation where we must take action to save the Constitution from the Court and the Court from itself. We must find a way to take an appeal from the Supreme Court to the Constitution itself. We want a Supreme Court which will do justice under the Constitution and not over it. In our courts we want a government of laws and not of men.
Who delivered that sensible assessment of an activist judiciary? Here’s a hint: He delivered the words during a “fireside chat.” (I took the quote from Levin’s Men in Black.)
