Daily Inspiration Quote by Arthur J. Goldberg

Goldberg’s line snaps constitutional rights out of the museum case and drops them onto the counter, payable immediately. Calling the Constitution’s guarantees “warrants” is a deliberately financial, almost transactional metaphor: a warrant isn’t a vague promise or a lofty aspiration; it’s an instrument you can cash. In other words, rights are not consolation prizes for a better future. They are due now, and government delay starts to look less like prudence and more like default.

The phrase “here and now” is the moral fuse. It rejects the perennial legal dodge that rights can be honored in principle while postponed in practice - by procedure, by backlog, by “public order,” by politics. Goldberg’s subtext is impatience with a judiciary that treats time itself as neutral. Delay is not neutral when the harmed party is sitting in a jail cell, being denied a vote, or living under surveillance. Time becomes a tool of power: the state can “win” simply by dragging its feet.

Then comes the narrowing hinge: “unless there is an overwhelmingly compelling reason.” Goldberg isn’t arguing for judicial impulsiveness; he’s setting a steep evidentiary bar. The state may burden a right only under a justification so strong it can survive scrutiny, not merely rhetoric. As a mid-century jurist shaped by the Warren Court era’s rights revolution and its backlash, Goldberg is staking out a posture: constitutional guarantees are presumptively immediate, and the burden of explanation belongs to those who would suspend them.