The Wit and Wisdom of Ted Kennedy - Bill Adler [7]
—Speech, June 14, 1976
ON THE CONSTITUTION AND
EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER LAW
IF TED KENNEDY HAD NOT BEEN A SENATOR, WHAT A great Supreme Court justice he might have made!
Looking over his lifetime of work, we find a dazzling array of writings on law and justice, many worthy of a legal scholar, but never as dusty and dry as the work so often found in academic journals.
He combined the scholar’s breadth of knowledge with the advocate’s passion, standing up for causes and principles in the style of a committed courtroom defender speaking for an embattled innocent. We saw this quality in him in the way he questioned nominees for attorney general who struck him as insufficiently committed to the preservation of our essential liberties. He took with utmost seriousness his charge as a senator to deliver to the president his best advice when it came to selection of justices for the highest court in the land; he would not consent to the appointment of anyone whose interpretation of the Constitution he found rigid and literalistic, unappreciative of the spirit of the founders’ vision.
At the same time he courageously opposed movements, however popular they may have been, to tinker with the Constitution unnecessarily: He believed that the American flag stood for free speech and that an amendment to restrict that speech honors neither the flag nor the Constitution. Nor would he sit silent as opponents of gay rights proposed to write their hostility to gay relationships into the Constitution in the form of a “traditional marriage” amendment.
Each time the rights of a segment of our society have come under fire, Senator Kennedy was right there, returning fire—defending civil rights for racial minorities, civil liberties for victims of profiling, equality for women, fair treatment of immigrants—and kept at it, right till the end. John F. Kennedy once observed that “life is unfair,” and that is certainly indisputable. But it is also true that life in America today is now to some degree a little less unfair due to his brother Teddy’s lifetime of work for “justice for all.”
Words [in the Constitution] are fine, but it has to be what a generation reads into those words.
—Speech to students
at Boston Latin Public High School,
April 29, 2002
Equal justice under law is not just a phrase carved in marble. It is the essence of the law, and the continuing challenge for our times is to see that it is a reality in our lives.
—Speech at the Judicial Conference
of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit,
Washington, DC, September 13, 1993
The Constitution does not just protect those whose views we share; it also protects those with whose views we disagree.
—Letter to a constituent, 1997
Today, many of us are concerned about the preservation of basic liberties protected by the Constitution. Clearly, as we work together to bring terrorists to justice and enhance our security, we must also act to preserve and protect our Constitution. The ideals we stand for here at home and around the world are indispensable to our strength. We betray those ideals and we betray the Constitution when we support detention of U.S. citizens without legal counsel or fair judicial review, and mass registration and fingerprinting of Muslim and Arab visa holders.
—Comments at the Senate Judiciary Hearing on
“The War Against Terrorism,” March 4, 2003
The First Amendment is one of the great pillars of our freedom. As we wage the war on terrorism to protect the nation for the future, it is also our responsibility to protect the ideals that America stands for here at home and around the world. This is not the time to restrict fundamental constitutional rights. …
Freedom of the press is essential to the public’s access to information. A free press is an important part of checks and balances on government and