ABSTRACT
Senator Douglas probably thought that his debates with Abraham Lincoln had gone against him. He would be very surprised to learn that 99 percent of Americans agree with him rather than Lincoln; that the Happy Convention has made him the winner at last. Preaching Christianity to a grizzly bear is, of course, pointless. The senators, like the grizzly, were oblivious. Lincoln, like Thomas Jefferson and Robert H. Jackson, believed his interpretation of the Constitution was as valid as the Court’s. Lincoln, like Jefferson and Jackson, believed Supreme Court rulings bind the parties to the case the Court decided. The president, under the Jefferson-Jackson-Lincoln approach, is politically accountable. The Douglas or Imperial Judiciary view allows the president to deny political responsibility. There is a philosophical chasm between Lincoln and Douglas. Justice Alito, like Chief Justice Roberts, sounds closer to Lincoln than to Douglas. Lincoln wrote in 1859, “The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society.”
