Many people in Western New York, the United States and in fact the World are familiar with Robert H. Jackson. Mr. Jackson was born in Spring Creek Township, Pa., in 1892 and moved to Jamestown when he was quite young.

There, when he was only 18, he joined a general practice law firm. In 1932, he was initially called by President Franklin Roosevelt to move to Washington, D.C. for a series of increasingly responsible positions including the U.S. Solicitor General, U.S. Attorney General, Associate Justice on the U.S Supreme Court, as well as the position that he is perhaps best known for, Chief Allied Prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials at the end of World War II.

I learned the above information, as well as much more, from the Jackson Center in Jamestown, but I mention it primarily to remind people what an important figure Justice Jackson was in American history. It may also explain why I have so much respect for him and his eloquent and thoughtful writing.

As part of his written opinion at the conclusion of a very important case heard by the Supreme Court in 1952, Youngstown Sheet and Tube Co. v. Sawyer, Jackson wrote, “The executive action we have here (President Truman attempting to seize private steel mills without explicit statutory authorization) originates in the individual will of the President and represents an exercise of authority without law….Men have discovered no technique for long preserving free government except that the Executive be under the law, and that the law be made by parliamentary deliberations….Such institutions may be destined to pass away. But it is the duty of the Court to be the last, not first, to give them up.”

I believe that these thoughts, expressed by Justice Jackson, may be even more important today. I do not believe that the United States can preserve a government “of the people, by the people and for the people”, as stated by President Lincoln in his Gettysburg address, as long as almost unlimited action can originate from the individual will of the President, with little parliamentary oversight, especially when the President is intimidating the Courts in an attempt to stop them from fulfilling their responsibilities.

Richard Ketcham is a Fredonia resident.