Thomas Jefferson | Democrat-Republican Party1
Jefferson strongly opposed judicial review, and in a letter to William Jarvis in 1820, he had this to say:
To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions [is] a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men and not more so. They have with others the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps. Their maxim is boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem [good justice is broad jurisdiction], and their power the more dangerous as they are in office for life and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves.
1The Democratic-Republican Party was the dominant political party in the United States from 1800-1824; it then split in to two factions, one of which became the modern day Democratic Party.
Image Source: Wikimedia Commons, Jefferson on Mount Rushmore
Quotation: Letter to William C. Jarvis, 1820
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