Press Release, Address of President Harry S. Truman

2441 HOLD FOR RELEASE HOLD FOR RELEASE HOLD FOR RELEASE 265 JUNE 27, 1950 CONFIDENTIAL: The following address of the President at the laying of the cornerstone of the new United States Courts Building in the District of Columbia, MUST BE HELD IN CONFIDENCE UNTIL RELEASED. NOTE: Release is automatic at 3:00 o'clock P.M., E.D.T., today, Tuesday, June 27, 1950. The same release applies to all newspapers and radio stations. PLEASE GUARD AGAINST PREMATURE RADIO ANNOUNCEMENT. CHARLES G. ROSS Secretary to the President We are meeting here today to lay the cornerstone of a new courthouse. This building will house the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. The increasing importance of these courts is indicated by the fact that they have TRUMAN long since outgrown the historic old buildings that served them so NARA long. These courts hear cases which are not only important to the private parties concerned, but which involve issues vital to the welfare and growth of the Nation. Nowhere else, outside the Supreme Court of the United States, will so many logal questions of national magnitude bo decided as in this building before us. It is fitting that these courts should have a building which is modern and suited to their needs. Our law courts play a key part in our national life, and their surroundings should be expressivo of the respect which we have for them. But the vitality of our cour ts is separate and anart from the buildings we create for them. The spirit and the meaning of our courts do not lie in the material settings wo provide for them, but in the living ideas which they enshrine. To our forefathers, the courts wore the distinctive symbol of the kind of government -- the kind of socicty -- which they wore creating in the wildcrness of this continent. This now Nation was to be a democracy based on the concopt of the rule of law. It was to be a society in which every man had rights -- inalionable rights -- rights which were not based on crced, or rank, or economic power, but on equality. In such a society, the courts had the function not only of dealing out justice an ong citizens, but of preserving justice between the citizens and the state. The founders of this country had a very clear concoption of the corruptibility of power -- of the innate danger in all human affairs of the solfish or arbitrary exercise of authcrity. To guard against this evor-prosent danger, they adopted the principle that there is a fundamental law -- expressed in the Constitution, and particularly in the Bill of Rights -- to which every exercise of power has to conform. The purpose of this fundamental law is to protect the rights of the individual. To apply this underlying law became the special task of the courts. This concept of justico based on individual rights is so f'amiliar to us that we take it for granted. Yet, in essonce, it is a revolutionary concept. It has always been a threat to absolutism and tyranny. It was the great weapon in our owm Revolution, and the basis of our Republic. Today, in a world where absolute power is again on the march, this concept of justice has tremondous strongth. It is a challenge to the new forms of tyranny as it was to the old. 30 of TUC ob (over)