Thanks, Steve.
I was one of those people who once attributed "eternal vigilance is the price
of liberty" to Jefferson. In belatedly tracking down a footnote, I found an
earlier source than Wendell Phillips for the core of the idea, if not the pithy
and commonly remembered phrasing.
"The condition upon which god hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance;
which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime
and the punishment of his guilt."
John Philpot Curran, Speech upon the Right of
Election of the Lord Mayor of Dublin, July 10, 1790
This according to Bartlett's 16th edition.
Quoting Steven Jamar <stevenja...@gmail.com>:
> Well done, Doug et al.
>
> While the signers of the letter disagree on a topic or two in the
> area of religious freedom and constitutional interpretation of the
> religion clauses, there is a huge breadth of space over which they
> and I suspect nearly all constitutional law experts agree. This is
> clearly one of the easy ones.
>
> Con Law books emphasize boundaries and hard cases. I regularly try
> to draw my students back to thinking about just how much is in fact
> settled and how clearly constitutional most of the efforts of
> Congress, the Court, the Executive, and the states in fact are.
> While the areas of dispute are oftentimes very important, we can
> sometimes (and maybe generally do) exaggerate their importance
> because they are the hot issues of the moment. This bill, the
> response to it, and Doug's letter serve to remind us that we agree
> on much.
>
> They also serve to remind us that even in settled, clear areas,
> people, whether well-meaning or otherwise, can act improperly and
> that indeed the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Wendell
> Phillips (1811?84) http://www.bartleby.com/73/1073.html[1] (often
> attributed to Thomas Jefferson, though no one has found where he
> said or wrote it).
>
> Thanks.
>
> Steve
>
> --
> Prof. Steven D. Jamar vox: 202-806-8017
> Associate Director, Institute of Intellectual Property and Social
> Justice http://iipsj.org[2]
> Howard University School of Law fax: 202-806-8567
> http://iipsj.com/SDJ/[3]
>
> "Nothing that is worth anything can be achieved in a lifetime;
> therefore we must be saved by hope."
>
> Reinhold Neibuhr
>
>
>
> On Mar 10, 2009, at 5:29 PM, Douglas Laycock wrote:
>
>> Earlier today we discussed a bill in Connecticut to impose
>> Protestant forms of church governance on the Catholic Church. The
>> bill has been pulled and tomorrow's hearing has been cancelled,
>> apparently due to a flood of calls to legislators. Church leaders
>> in Connecticut are not convinced that the issue is fully dead.
>> Maybe they are right; maybe they are just being cautious.
>>
>> If the link below actually works, you can find there a copy of the
>> bill, and a copy of a letter that twelve of us sent to the Committee
>> Co-Chairs. We cannot take credit for killing the bill; they
>> apparently pulled it before our letter was delivered. I hope we can
>> take credit for a good explanation of why it is clearly
>> unconstitutional.
>>
>> http://www-personal.umich.edu/~laycockd/[4]
>>
>> The breadth of agreement that this one was unconstitutional, which
>> extends far beyond the signers of this letter, is encouraging.
>>
>> Douglas Laycock
>> Yale Kamisar Collegiate Professor of Law
>> University of Michigan Law School
>> 625 S. State St.
>> Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1215
>> 734-647-9713_______________________________________________
>> To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu
>> To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see
>> http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw[5]
>>
>> Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed
>> as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that
>> are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can
>> (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
>
>
Douglas Laycock
Yale Kamisar Collegiate Professor of Law
University of Michigan Law School
625 S. State St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1215
734-647-9713
Links:
------
[1] http://www.bartleby.com/73/1073.html
[2] http://iipsj.org/
[3] http://iipsj.com/SDJ/
[4] http://www-personal.umich.edu/~laycockd/
[5] http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw_______________________________________________
To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu
To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see
http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw
Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private.
Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can
read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the
messages to others.
