Quotes About Legislature

As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes put it: "We do not inquire what the legislature meant; we ask only what the statute means.

Inhabited by an endless stream of mountebanks, bigots, thieves, embezzlers, and bribe-takers, it would be challenging to violate the dignity of Mexico's legislatures.

In regard to education, something has been done by the Provincial Legislature but to build churches, and to place clergymen is a work of greater difficulty.

The time, it is to be hoped, is gone by, when any defence would be necessary of the "liberty of the press" as one of the securities against corrupt or tyrannical government. No argument, we may suppose, can now be needed, against permitting a legislature or an executive, not identified in interest with the people, to prescribe opinions to them, and determine what doctrines or what arguments they shall be allowed to hear.

Most political crises—the decisive votes, which determine the fate of Government—are generally either on questions of foreign policy or of new laws; and the questions of foreign policy come out generally in this way, that the Government has already done something, and that it is for the one part of the legislature alone—for the House of Commons, and not for the House of Lords—to say whether they have or have not forfeited their place by the treaty they have made.

A legislature continuously sitting, always making laws, always repealing laws, would have been both an anomaly and a nuisance.

The debates in the American Congress have little teaching efficacy; it is the characteristic vice of Presidential government to deprive them of that efficacy; in that government a debate in the legislature has little effect, for it cannot turn out the executive, and the executive can veto all it decides.

There may be some rights—"natural," "human," or otherwise—that should also be civil rights. But if we desire to give such rights the protection of the law, our recourse is to a legislature or to the amendment procedures of the Constitution. We must not look to politicians, or sociologists—or the courts—to correct the deficiency.

But Connecticut and Rhode Island have originally realized the most perfect polity as to a legislature.

Let us leave political questions to be decided by the powers concerned, Sir Ralph would say, as we have adopted a form of government which forbids us to discuss our interests ourselves. If a nation is responsible for the faults of its legislature, what one can you find that is guiltier than yours?

I went West and took part in the strike of the machinists - the Southern Pacific Railroad, the corporation that swung California by its golden tail, that controlled its legislature, its farmers, its preachers, its workers.

I'm pro-life. I'll do all I can to see every baby is created with a future and potential. The legislature should do all it can to protect human life.

I served with General Washington in die Legislature of Virginia...and...with Doctor Franklin in Congress. I never heard neither of them speak ten minutes at a time, nor to any but the main point.

Our nation may be able to put a man on the moon in a few years, but it still cannot find out how to put a Negro in the legislature of Mississippi or put an unemployed worker back on the job. I have nothing against exploration of the moon or the planets, but if we can reach so high that we can challenge the mysteries and dangers of space, surely we can challenge the poverty and discrimination under our feet.

In John Adams's worst nightmare, the story of the American Revolution assumed a different formulation: "The essence of the whole will be that Dr. Franklin's electrical rod smote the earth and out sprung General Washington. That Franklin electrified him with his rod—and thence forward these two conducted all the policy, negotiation, legislatures, and war.

This is why it's so important to have intellectual and ideological diversity within any group or institution whose goal is to find truth (such as an intelligence agency or a community of scientists) or to produce good public policy (such as a legislature or advisory board).

Article VII When land forces are raised by any State for the common defense, all officers of or under the rank of colonel, shall be appointed by the legislature of each State respectively, by whom such forces shall be raised, or in such manner as such State shall direct, and all vacancies shall be filled up by the State which first made the appointment.

When I was in the California legislature in the '80s, the organic growers, who were sort of the small hippie farmers in those days, brought it to my attention that there were no regulations on organic labeling. In essence, anybody could just grow a thing any way they wanted and put 'organic' on it.

Yet the Pennsylvania radicals continued to assault judges for their abuse of discretionary authority."Judges," the popular radicals contended in 1807,"very often discover that the law, as written, may be made to mean something which the legislature never thought of. The greatest part of their decisions are in fact, and in effect, making new laws.

My job is to interpret the law based on how the legislature and the court has done it and then, of course, to use our system of justice to develop some new legal tools and new concepts.

Those reasons are much more basic: it is flagrantly unjust to keep women out, by whatever unconscious means we do so; and we simply cannot afford to do without women's expertise, whether it is in technology, the economy or social care. If that means fewer men get into the legislature, as it must do – social change always has its losers as well as its winners – I am happy to look those men in the eye.

Realizing that they can't get their agenda across: against religious liberty, against a culture of life, they can't get those issues across through the legislature, as people respond and their elected officials represent them, so they attempt to do it through the courts.

From the beginning, we promised folks that they'll see whatever event we cover in its entirety, from gavel to gavel - whether it's the House of Representatives or the Senate. That's the whole reason for being.

Belonging to the Gang of Eight carries massive responsibility in representing all 435 members of the legislature in very sensitive national security exercises.