No, not last night’s speech from our President, though it was one of his better ones.  But Orin Kerr reminded me of a speech by Justice Robert Jackson, given when he was a mere 3 months into his tenure as Attorney General in 1940. 

This comes by way of my old buddy, Jackson scholar and St. John’s Lawprof John Q. Barrett.  While this isn’t going to be one of my posts that garners broad attention, as it doesn’t address any of the wild issues of the day and I won’t be expressing any of my “cranky old man” opinions about it, this is really worth reading, and re-reading every once in a while.  Particularly if you happen to be a prosecutor.  Or a judge.  Or alive.

Just to give a flavor, here’s the final paragraph of Jackson’s speech:

The qualities of a good prosecutor are as elusive and as impossible to define as those which mark a gentleman. And those who need to be told would not understand it anyway. A sensitiveness to fair play and sportsmanship is perhaps the best protection against the abuse of power, and the citizen’s safety lies in the prosecutor who tempers zeal with human kindness, who seeks truth and not victims, who serves the law and not factional purposes, and who approaches his task with humility.

Read the whole speech here.  Justice Jackson’s thoughts remain as relevant today as they were when first uttered.