Jefferson on the Judiciary - 1823

The Patriot Post
Founders' Quote Daily

"At the establishment of our constitutions, the judiciary bodies
were supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of
the government. Experience, however, soon showed in what way
they were to become the most dangerous; that the insufficiency
of the means provided for their removal gave them a freehold
and irresponsibility in office; that their decisions, seeming to
concern individual suitors only, pass silent and unheeded by the
public at large; that these decisions, nevertheless, become law
by precedent, sapping, by little and little, the foundations of
the constitution, and working its change by construction, before
any one has perceived that that invisible and helpless worm
has been busily employed in consuming its substance. In truth,
man is not made to be trusted for life, if secured against all
liability to account."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Monsieur A. Coray, 31 October 1823)

Reference: respec. Quoted