What are the maxims of Democracy? A strict observance of justice and public faith, and a steady adherence to virtue.

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.

Certainly all those who have framed written constitutions contemplate them as forming the fundamental and paramount law of the nation, and consequently the theory of every such government must be, that an act of the legislature, repugnant to the constitution, is void.

This government is acknowledged by all, to be one of enumerated powers.

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.

Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos.

No principle of general law is more universally acknowledged, than the perfect equality of nations. Russia and Geneva have equal rights. It results from this equality, that no one can rightfully impose a rule on another....As no nation can prescribe a rule for others, none can make a law of nations.