Blizzard v. State

Thomas Jefferson, on July 31, 1788, wrote a letter to James Madison, freshly returned from his duties as Virginia delegate to the Constitutional Convention and the Convention’s chief recorder, in which he referred to the Constitution of the United States as, “ ... a good canvas, on which some strokes only want retouching.” The Congress and the courts of this country have, from time to time, applied the strokes deemed necessary to retouch the canvas, with the Supreme Court exercising its role as the master artist. In that capacity, the Court, speaking through Mr. Justice Stewart,* 1 declared,…