The peculiar circumstances of the moment may render a measure more or less wise, but cannot render it more or less constitutional.

The constitution is either a superior paramount law, unchangeable by ordinary means, or it is on a level with ordinary legislative acts, alterable when the legislature shall please to alter it. It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is. This is the very essence of judicial duty.

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.

Have no power, by taxation or otherwise, to retard, impede, burden or in any manner control the operations of the constitutional laws enacted by Congress.

No political dreamer was ever wild enough to think of breaking down the lines which separate the States and compounding the American people into one common mass.

The acme of judicial distinction means the ability to look a lawyer straight in the eyes for two hours and not hear a damned word he says.

In a free government almost all other rights would become worthless if the government possessed power over the private fortune of every citizen.