How do the Democrats explain away the fact that they have views totally in opposition to those of the founder of their party? They don't have to -- Jefferson was a slave owner, so he's already been given the Soviet treatment (Jefferson? Who? There was no such person.), and his inconvenient views can be safely ignored.
The quote below was undoubtedly in reaction to Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall's assertion of the power of judicial review in Marbury v. Madison (1803). Although the court didn't really exercise this assumed power until the Dred Scott case (1857), it seems clear that in the years since then Jefferson's fears were not misplaced.
[T]he opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves, in their own sphere of action, but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch.-- Thomas Jefferson
(Courtesy of The Federalist's "Founders Quote Daily")
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