Quotes About Constitutional

It is impossible to build sound constitutional doctrine upon a mistaken understanding of Constitutional history... The establishment clause has been expressly freighted with Jefferson's misleading metaphor for nearly forty years... There is simply no historical foundation for the proposition that the framers intended to build a wall of separation... The recent court decisions are in no way based on either the language or intent of the framers.

Our federal government, which was intended to operate as a very limited constitutional republic, has instead become a virtually socialist leviathan that redistributes trillions of dollars. We can hardly be surprised when countless special interests fight for the money. The only true solution to the campaign money problem is a return to a proper constitutional government that does not control the economy. Big government and big campaign money go hand-in-hand.

We have to reformulate moral standards. Human beings have to impose limits on themselves when it comes to their actions and desires. There is a beautiful and very radical notion in the bible: Man is made in the image of God, no matter how sick, poor or damaged he is. We should try to transpose this maxim to our secular and constitutional self-image.

Particularly when the war power is invoked to do things to the liberties of people, or to their property or economy that only indirectly affect conduct of the war and do not relate to the engagement of the war itself, the constitutional basis should be scrutinized with care. ... I would not be willing to hold that war powers may be indefinitely prolonged merely by keeping legally alive a state of war that had in fact ended. I cannot accept the argument that war powers last as long as the effects and consequences of war for if so they are permanent -- as permanent as the war debts.

One question we must consider today is how we can take action to unify our nation, heal racial division, end poverty and give real-life meaning to the constitutional mandate that there be equal protection under law.

Americans have only the dimmest notion of what their constitutional freedoms are - and what it took to get them...[and] the willingness to surrender what we're supposed to be fighting for is a recurring part of our history.

Different political views, even if they're all liberal, in the sense of supporting liberal constitutional democracy, undoubtedly have some notion of the common good in the form of the means provided to assure that people can make use of their liberties, and the like.

I found that I was getting a warm reception for my message of freeing you from the income tax, releasing you from Social Security, ending the insane war on drugs, restoring gun rights, and reducing the federal government to just its constitutional functions.

The value of "one person, one vote," the value of equality, is a value that was given to us more than 50 years ago as a central part of our constitutional tradition. So, under that principle, we ought to be applying the same standard today that I would have said we should have applied a year ago.

To protect one's identity is a Constitutional right.

Change from below, the formulation of demands from the populace to end unacceptable injustice, supported by direct action, has played a far larger part in shaping British democracy than most constitutional lawyers, political commentators, historians or statesmen have ever cared to admit. Direct action in a democratic society is fundamentally an educational exercise.

If the constitutional right to keep and bear arms is to mean anything, it must, as a general matter, permit a person to possess, carry and sometimes conceal arms to maintain the security of his private residence or privately operated business.

[I watch] all that stuff - Game of Thrones and all the other series. How about House of Cards? As for Boardwalk Empire - that's another period of government overreach, but at least they use the amendment process! In real life, the executive branch, by violating the Constitution, is using statutes in place of constitutional amendments to diminish our liberty.

We're looking at a president [Barack Obama] who's engaged in double-speak where he doesn't call radical Islamic terrorism by its name. Indeed, he gives a speech after the San Bernardino attack where his approach is to try to go after the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens rather than to keep us safe.

The establishment of the chaplainship to Congress is a palpable violation of ... constitutional principles.

There is a vast difference - a constitutional difference-between restrictions imposed by the state which prohibit the intellectual commingling of students, and the refusal of individuals to commingle where the state presents no such bar.

Congress is best viewed from a distance—the farther the better—because up close, it is truly ugly. I saw most of Congress as uncivil, incompetent at fulfilling their basic constitutional responsibilities (such as timely appropriations), micromanagerial, parochial, hypocritical, egotistical, thin-skinned and prone to put self (and re-election) before country.

On this day, when we're celebrating our constitutional heritage, I urge you to be faithful to that heritage - to impose on our fellow citizens only the restrictions that are there in the Constitution, not invent new ones, not to invent the right because it's a good idea.

This is nothing new. We saw this with the Social Security Act, the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Right Act - constitutional challenges were brought to all three of these monumental pieces of legislation.

Anything that is missing in the implementation of the Minsk Agreement is - without any exception - up to the Kiev central government of Ukraine. You cannot demand something of Moscow that, in fact, the rulers in Kiev have to deliver. The most important aspect is the constitutional reform, Point 11 of the Minsk Agreement.

Corruption, the most infallible symptom of constitutional liberty, was successfully practised; honours, gifts, and immunities were offered and accepted as the price of an episcopal vote; and the condemnation of the Alexandrian primate was artfully represented as the only measure which could restore the peace and union of the catholic church.

We must not allow the liberals to move us away from the conservative values of the American past which sustain our present and shall secure our future. As for me and my family, we will serve God, we will serve this constitutional republic, we will serve America.

A sacred respect for the constitutional law is the vital principle, the sustaining energy of a free government.

Our constitutional system is founded on democracy: the will of the people, not the unchecked rule of judges.

I think that the Court's task, in this as in all areas of constitutional adjudication, is not responsibly aided by the uncritical invocation of metaphors like the ' wall of separation,' a phrase nowhere to be found in the Constitution.

No matter how many pro-freedom politicians we elect to office, the only way to guarantee constitutional government is through an educated and activist public devoted to the ideals of liberty.

If it be asked what is to restrain the House of Representatives from making legal discriminations in favor of themselves and a particular class of the society? I answer, the genius of the whole system, the nature of just and constitutional laws, and above all the vigilant and manly spirit which actuates the people of America, a spirit which nourishes freedom, and in return is nourished by it.

I am a member of a party of one, and I live in an age of fear. Nothing lately has unsettled my party and raised my fears as much as your editorial, on Thanksgiving Day, suggesting that employees should be required to state their beliefs in order to hold their jobs. The idea is inconsistent with our constitutional theory and has been stubbornly opposed by watchful men since the early days of the Republic.

Since it is proposed to regard chemical reactions as electrical transactions in which reagents act by reason of a constitutional affinity either for electrons or for atomic nuclei, it is important to be able to recognize which type of reactivity any given reagent exhibits.

[T]he great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachment of the others.

Who will show me any Constitutional injunction which makes it the duty of the American people to surrender everything valuable in life, and even life, itself, whenever the purposes of an ambitious and mischievous government may require it? ... A free government with an uncontrolled power of military conscription is the most ridiculous and abominable contradiction and nonsense that ever entered into the heads of men.

When dealing with illegal immigration, the answer is simple; enforce Constitutional mandates, and you will protect Floridians and the American people.

No system of criminal justice can, or should, survive if it comes to depend for its continued effectiveness on the citizens' abdication through unawareness of their constitutional rights. No system worth preserving should have to fear that if an accused is permitted to consult with a lawyer, he will become aware of, and exercise, these rights.

To consider judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions is a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.

The whole point of constitutional democracy is the peaceful transfer of power; of Al Gore passing the baton to George W. Bush, even though that election was very suspiciously called.

This understanding, underlying constitutional interpretation since the New Deal, reflects the Constitution's demands for structural flexibility sufficient to adapt substantive laws and institutions to rapidly changing social, economic, and technological conditions.

I'm concerned about the survival, historically, of constitutional democracy.

I think basic disease care access and basic access to health care is a human right. If we need a constitutional amendment to put it in the Bill of Rights, then that's what we ought to do. Nobody with a conscience would leave the victim of a shark attack to bleed while we figure out whether or not they could pay for care. That tells us that at some level, health care access is a basic human right. Our system should be aligned so that our policies match our morality. Then within that system where everybody has access, we need to incentivize prevention, both for the patient and the provider.

Andrew Jackson was the first president to claim that the desires of the public overrode Congress's constitutional prerogatives. Virtually every president since Jackson has claimed the mantle, even while lacking two ingredients of an electoral mandate: a landslide victory and a specific agenda.

The traditional religious right's failure to restore public-school prayer or pass an antiabortion constitutional amendment has likely helped fuel the spread of the more extreme dominionist school.

England shouldn't have the real freedom of vote and we shouldn't either. Because as [James Madison] put it, one of the primary goals of government was to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority, to make sure the opulent maintain their rights. The constitutional system was structured to ensure that outcome.

We hear about constitutional rights, free speech and the free press. Every time I hear these words I say to myself, "That man is a Red, that man is a Communist." You never hear a real American talk like that.

Of governments there are said to be only two forms - democracy and oligarchy. For aristocracy is considered to be a kind of oligarchy, as being the rule of a few, and the so-called constitutional government to be really a democracy.

As presidential authority expands, and the role of Congress diminishes, the American people continue to lose control over their government. Today's assertions of executive power are indeed a nightmare and Peter Shane's extremely readable and well-informed book describes this disturbing transformation in frightening detail. For anybody who cares about our constitutional system of protected liberties, this book is indispensable. I couldn't put it down and grew angrier, and more concerned, with every page.

If there's a distinct group of Americans who harbor open contempt for constitutional principles and rule of law, it's lawyers, judges and members of Congress.

Given currency by Jrgen Habermas in the late l980s, 'constitutional patriotism' has emerged as an appealing principle for post-national political allegiance. Jan-Werner Mller traces the long postwar history of the concept, takes honest account of the conservative critiques it has provoked, but proposes that it can serve as a robust norm for European Union citizenship. This is a profound meditation with real importance for contemporary political society.

Mr. President, passage of this bill will visit the heel of oppression on all the people, vitiate their constitutional shield against tyranny, and materially hasten the destruction of the best design for self-government yet devised by the minds of men. Its passage will mark one of the darkest days in history

I must say this concerning the great controversy over rifles and shotguns. The only thing I've ever said is that in areas where the government has proven itself either unwilling or unable to defend the lives and the property of Negroes, it's time for Negroes to defend themselves. Article number two of the constitutional amendments provides you and me the right to own a rifle or a shotgun. It is constitutionally legal to own a shotgun or a rifle.