THE CLICHÉ THAT "THE CONSTITUTION IS NOT A SUICIDE PACT": |By
GEORGE P. FLETCHER| |Tuesday, Jan. 07, 2003| We live in a time
when citizens - and indeed, even constitutional lawyers - are
ready to compromise constitutional guarantees for the sake of
increased security, whether real or imagined. Those who argue
that we must be flexible in times of danger often mouth the
slogan, "The Constitution is not a suicide pact." By that, they
mean that civil liberties only go so far, and at extremes,
security must take precedence. This supposed kernel of wisdom
has become part of the post-9-11 orthodoxy. But a closer look at
the slogan's use in judicial opinions, over time, shows that it
hardly supports the anti-civil-liberties positions for which it
is now so often cited. Indeed, over the course of history, the
rhetoric of "suicide pacts" has far more frequently been invoked
in the course of arguments for protecting constitutional rights
- not arguments for sacrificing them to security concerns. The
Genesis and History