When a law is in its nature a contract, when absolute rights have vested under that contract, a repeal of the law cannot divest those rights.

It is emphatically the province and duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is.

The particular phraseology of the Constitution of the United States confirms and strengthens the principle, supposed to be essential to all written constitutions, that a law repugnant to the Constitution is void; and that courts, as well as other departments, are bound by that instrument.

Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, which are not prohibited, but consist with the letter and spirit of the constitution, are constitutional.

The most lively fancy aided by the strongest description cannot equal the reality of the opera.

The law does not expect a man to be prepared to defend every act of his life which may be suddenly and without notice alleged against him.

I fear we may live to see another revolution.