Quotes About Constitutional

It means that we must abandon the method of civil disobedience, non-cooperation and satyagraha. When there was no way left for constitutional methods for achieving economic and social objectives, there was a great deal of justification for unconstitutional methods. But where constitutional methods are open, there can be no justification for these unconstitutional methods. These methods are nothing but the Grammar of Anarchy and the sooner they are abandoned, the better for us.

There may have been somewhere, as a few eighteenth-century philosophers dreamed, a group of peaceful men who got together one evening after work and drew up a Social Contract to form the state. But nobody has been able to find an actual record of it. Practically all the governments whose origins are historically established were the result of conquest-of one tribe by another, one city by another, one people by another. Of course there have been constitutional conventions, but they merely changed the working rules of governments already in being.

We all have the right to call each other names. Rudeness is a deeply held constitutional value.

The Reagan Administration has fostered a climate in which a barest majority of the Supreme Court caters to the passions and hatreds of the American mob, stripping away the constitutional shield outside our bedrooms.... How tragically ironic that an Administration that promised to get Government "off our backs" is now so active in draping Government gumshoes over every part of our anatomies.

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.

The United States cannot and should not discriminate on the basis of religion. The free exercise of religion is at the very heart of our constitutional guarantee for all persons of this country.

I think that it is not right to deny a constitutional right based on simple, derogatory information that's been reported but not investigated. By contrast, to get on the No Fly List or the Selectee list, there has to be credible evidence that the individual is either involved in a terrorist plot, has terrorist associates or is providing material support to terrorists.

...it is not only the general principles of justice that are infringed, or at least set aside, by the exclusion of women, merely as women, from any share in the representation; that exclusion is also repugnant to the particular principles of the British Constitution. It violates one of the oldest of our constitutional maxims...that taxation and representation should be co-extensive. Do not women pay taxes?

People for the American Way says it has yet to find anyone who has made a stronger case against the proposed school prayer Constitutional amendment... What kind of prayer would we use?

In real life, there are right-wingers, there are anti-immigrant activists who want to overturn this constitutional right that we have to become Americans when we're born in this country. There's lots of people who believe that this has led to the phenomenon of the anchor babies. I am an anchor baby. My parents were able to receive their residency and citizenship because, I, a U.S. citizen child of theirs, was born in Los Angeles.

Again, a law may be both constitutional and expedient, and yet may be administered in an unjust and unfair way.

Our democracy, our constitutional framework is really a kind of software for harnessing the creativity and political imagination for all of our people. The American democratic system was an early political version of Napster.

It is too disgusting to contemplate that a handful of men keep millions of women from being constitutional citizens of this land.

When Pat Robertson says there is no constitutional doctrine of separation of church and state, I say he is wrong.

We're seeing is young people who are optimistic, who want a future, want our constitutional rights, are coming to our campaign.

Strictly enforce the scale of "fixed responsibility." The first and foremost level of responsibility is with the individual himself; the second level is the family; then the church; next the community, finally the county, and, in a disaster or emergency, the state. Under no circumstances is the federal government to become involved in public welfare. The Founders felt it would corrupt the government and also the poor. No Constitutional authority exists for the federal government to participate in charity or welfare.

Jacobins, I have a truth to tell you. You do not know your most deadly enemies; they are the constitutional priests. It is they who protest most in the provinces against anarchists, disorganisers, Dantonism, Robespierrism, Jacobinism... Do not cherish any longer the popular errors; cut at the roots of superstition! Declare openly that the priests are your enemies.

I am not sure that I know enough about the pre-history of 9/11 to agree or disagree. But I did think at the time that the [George W.] Bush administration took a number of cues from the Israeli government, not only by drawing on and intensifying anti-Arab racism, but by insisting that the attack on US government and financial buildings was an attack on "democracy" and by invoking "security at all costs" to wage war without a clear focus (why the Taliban?), and by suspending both constitutional rights and the regular protocol for congressional approval for declaring war.

I fear that the impact of university censorship and university denial of due process will be to mis-educate a generation of students away from core values of civil liberties and constitutional safeguards. Students who have been led to believe by university administrators and faculty that censorship and denial of due process are acceptable norms will be more susceptible to accepting those norms in their post-university lives. That would be a tragedy for America.

Our constitutional liberties shall not be sacrificed in our search for greater security, for that is what our enemies and all enemies of freedom and democracy hope to achieve.

It is unclear how disarming law-abiding citizens would better protect them from the dangers and threats posed by those who would flout the law. It is at just such times that the constitutional right to self-defense is most precious and must be protected from government overreach.

I call the present system 'Post-Constitutional America.' As I sometimes put it, the U.S. Constitution poses no serious threat to our form of government.

I certainly want campaign finance reform. I just wish this would do it in a way that would stand up to a constitutional challenge.

I'm not versed enough in constitutional law to run for office. I'd have to go back to school or something.

Corruption, the most infallible symptom of constitutional liberty.

I believe strongly in the Constitutional principle of separating church and state. Our founders were right in fearing that religious freedom would be threatened in the long run by a departure from governmental neutrality in spiritual matters.

There are a lot of things that I really question - the legality of the drone strikes, these NSA revelations. Jimmy Carter came out and said we don’t live in a democracy. That’s a little intense when an ex-president says that. So you know, he’s got some explaining to do, particularly for a constitutional law professor.

Sheriff Knezovich's bill was poorly-written and not constitutional, according to many attorneys, including myself, that reviewed it. We want to go forward with something that's going to stand up to the scrutiny that all bills go under once they've been passed into law.

If it is not totalitarian to arrest a man and detain him, when you cannot charge him with any offence against any written law – if that is not what we have always cried out against in Fascist states – then what is it?… If we are to survive as a free democracy, then we must be prepared, in principle, to concede to our enemies – even those who do not subscribe to our views – as much constitutional rights as you concede yourself.

Arizona presents no specific reason for excepting capital defendants from the constitutional protections extended to defendants generally, and none is readily apparent.

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.

Every president since George Washington has respected this clause in the Constitution. We want to avoid that Constitutional potential crisis. And the way to do it is for Donald Trump - it`s not about him.

For black politicians, civil rights organizations and white liberals to support the racist practices of the University of Michigan amounts to no less than a gross betrayal of the civil rights principles of our historic struggle from slavery to the final guarantee of constitutional rights to all Americans. Indeed, it was practices like those of the University of Michigan, but against blacks, that were the focal point of much of the civil rights movement.

What Congress and the popular sentiment approve is rarely defeated by reason of constitutional objections. I trust the measure will turn out well. It is a great relief to me. Defeat in this way, after a full and public hearing before this [Electoral] Commission, is not mortifying in any degree, and success will be in all respects more satisfactory.

Now to avoid any collision of armed forces, and perhaps the loss of life, I do this under protest and impelled by said force yield my authority until such time as the Government of the United States shall, upon facts being presented to it, undo the action of its representatives and reinstate me in the authority which I claim as the Constitutional Sovereign of the Hawaiian Islands.

This liberal progressive agenda... is the antithesis of who we are as a constitutional republic.

I'm a judge. It seemed to me that it was critical to try to take action to stem the criticism and help people understand that in the constitutional framework, it's terribly important not to have a system of retaliation against decisions people don't like.

The only true corrective of Constitutional abuses is education.

Western civilization has been at war with tribalism for 3,000 years. And that war was brought to the New World by the English colonists. A very early point in American law Chief Justice John Marshall is asked to decide the status of Indian tribes. And what he does. He calls them savages who lack the same rights as the white people who came over here, the Europeans, and colonized their land under this, what many Americans might regard as an obscure legal doctrine called the Doctrine of Discovery. But it is still the most important doctrine in American constitutional law.

The war for our Union, with all the constitutional issues which it settled, and all the military lessons which it gathered in, has throughout its dilatory length but one meaning in the eyes of history. It freed the country from the social plague which until then had made political development impossible in the United States. More and more, as the years pass, does the meaning stand forth as the sole meaning.

Ron Paul would have demanded that entire departments be shuttered – not that the bums merely bring into balance what was stolen (taxes) with what is squandered (spending). Besides, what a balanced-budget requirement implies is that government has the constitutional right to spend as much as it takes in – that government is permitted to waste however much revenue it can extract from wealth producers.

Bush proposed a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Some saw the move as an attempt to preserve traditional values, while others saw it as a cynical ploy to ensure that Vice President... Cheney will never have to pay for his gay daughter's wedding.

Demand the ballot as the undeniable right of every man who is called to the poll, and take special care that the old constitutional rule and principle, by which majorities alone shall decide in Parliamentary elections, shall not be violated.

It may be considered as an objection inherent in the principle, that as every appeal to the people would carry an implication of some defect in the government, frequent appeals would in great measure deprive the government of that veneration which time bestows on every thing, and without which perhaps the wisest and freest governments would not possess the requisite stability . . . a constitutional road to the decision of the people ought to be marked out and kept open, for certain great and extraordinary occasions

With that in mind and in celebration of National Prayer Day, today I have proposed in the House of Representatives a Constitutional Amendment that would restore voluntary prayer in our Nation's schools.

Remember, it is the president's constitutional duty to provide a strong national defense. Don't insert politics into national security. Listen to your ground commanders. They know better than anyone what our military's needs are. Have somebody strong at home who can provide you with needed support 'off the battle field.'

By creating a prosecutor who is overseen over by a court, they are melding executive and judicial power in a way that can lead to terrible abuses - as the founders of America understood full well. It's why they created a system of separated powers - to set up a constitutional mechanism that would enhance freedom, by making sure that no one's accumulation of power could predominate over [that of] others.

The people of North America, at this time, expect a revisal and reformation of the American Governments, and are better disposed to submit to it than ever they were, or perhaps ever will be again.97. This is therefore the proper and critical time to reform the American governments upon a general, constitutional, firm, and durable plan; and if it is not done now, it will probably every day grow more difficult, till at last it becomes impracticable.