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… is from U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Frank Murphy’s concurring opinion in the 1943 case Hirabayashi v. United States [2] (320 U.S. 81); I learned of this quotation from Robert Higgs’s July 1987 Reason article titled “In the Name of Emergency [3],” which is reprinted in the superb 2004 collection of some of Bob’s essays, Against Leviathan [4]:
[W]e must not forget that few indeed have been the invasions upon essential liberties which have not been accompanied by pleas of urgent necessity advanced in good faith by responsible men.
DBx: Yes. Yet at least as numerous have been invasions upon essential liberties encouraged by the pleas of irresponsible men (and women).