the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court

I'D INTENDED to take a long excursion into what the great Abraham Lincoln said about the Dred Scott decision and the power that the Supreme Court gave itself in that worst decision that court has made, so far.   Instead of a long one that might discourage people reading the longer post below, I'll do a short one.  In his first Inaugural Address,  delivered right after Roger. B. Taney as Chief "justice" had given him the oath, as he sat listening.  Lincoln said this about it:

I do not forget the position assumed by some that constitutional questions are to be decided by the Supreme Court, nor do I deny that such decisions must be binding in any case upon the parties to a suit as to the object of that suit, while they are also entitled to very high respect and consideration in all parallel cases by all other departments of the Government. And while it is obviously possible that such decision may be erroneous in any given case, still the evil effect following it, being limited to that particular case, with the chance that it may be overruled and never become a precedent for other cases, can better be borne than could the evils of a different practice. At the same time, the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal. Nor is there in this view any assault upon the court or the judges. It is a duty from which they may not shrink to decide cases properly brought before them, and it is no fault of theirs if others seek to turn their decisions to political purposes.

Aside from being one of the smartest of our presidents, an experienced and able lawyer, and probably the best writer of the entire bunch, it's necessary to read what he said very carefully.   His apparent bowing to the power of the Supreme Court is mitigated by his pointing out that no court is all wise, they will always make mistakes and warns that none of their decisions should ever be considered as binding except to the parties in that particular case in order to limit the spread of such evils.   He holds out the chance that they might be overruled, that was, certainly in answer to one of our worst president's, James Bucanan's, declaration of the duty to submit to the Court in his only inaugural address, insisting on the universal applicability of the Dred Scott decision that he, himself influenced and which, apparently with his blessing,  the Court used to give itself the very powers that Lincoln warned against in about as strong a way as it could be put in polite language.

At the same time, the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.

You have to wonder what Lincoln would make of the Rehnquist and Roberts' courts assaults on the majority vote in the election in 2000 and the rights of all citizens to cast a legal vote and to have that vote count.   The "eminent tribunal" working hand-in-glove with the Federalist-fascists, the Republican-fascists, Mitch McConnell and others to disenfranchise Black Voters, Latinos, Native Americans,  groups likely to vote more heavily for today's Democrats, favoring the corruption of our political process by billionaires and millionaires foreign as well as domestic, etc. if he may have not been even stronger in his warning.  

It wouldn't be that long after that, in the next several years that Lincoln had to disobey Taney as he tried to interfere with his fighting the Civil War that they had done so much to ensure would happen.   When Taney issued the order negating Lincoln's suspension of Habeas Corpus to prevent slavery men in Maryland, Taney's circuit, from by sedition, sabotage and treason aiding the Confederate traitors.  Lincoln refused to go along.   You have to wonder if he hadn't been assassinated by a slavery man if he may have, after the war, done something to limit or strip the Court of the powers he warned the Court was assuming for itself, the "government by judiciary" that Louis Boudin exposed in his book.