Quotes About Constitution

The Constitution was a reaffirmation of faith in the principles painfully evolved over the centuries by the English-speaking peoples. It enshrined long-standing English ideas of justice and liberty, henceforth to be regarded on the other side of the Atlantic as basically American.

To prosper, a zoo needs parliamentary government, democratic elections, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of association, rule of law and everything else enshrined in India's Constitution. Impossible to enjoy the animals otherwise. Long-term, bad politics is bad for business.

The amazing fact is that America is founded on a document. It's a work in progress. It can be tested by each generation.

The constitution is designed for equal protection of rights. Taxation is designed for equal distribution of rights.

the Constitution of the Soviet Union, which Aleksandr Zinoviev tellingly defined as a document published in order to find out who agreed with it, so that they could be dealt with.

Today, they separately demonstrate what a luxury it is to be a stable, prosperous, democratic nation with a dependable constitution.

The Constitution was the expression not only of a political faith, but also of political fears. It was wrought both as the organ of the national interest and as the bulwark of certain individual and local rights.

Deep within the human constitution lie written laws of nature that should guide man in the conduct of his life.

Als das Grundgesetz entstandt, zitterte förmlich der Boden, auf dem es geschrieben wurde.

Mirabeau: "If you have been told to clear us from this hall, you must ask for orders to use force. We shall leave our seats only at bayonet point. The King can cause us to be killed; tell him we all await death; but he need not hope that we shall separate until we have made the constitution." Audible only to his neighbor, he adds, "If they come, we bugger off, quick.

they were intent on framing a 'Declaration of the Rights of Man'. Some were heard to mutter that the Assembly should write the constitution first, since rights exist in virtue of laws, but jurisprudence is such a dull subject, and liberty so exciting.

In old men thus constituted the soul governs the body, and gives it strength to die erect.

The whole notion, the whole concept of individual liberty is gone. The whole concept of limited government is gone. The whole concept of the Bill of Rights, the whole concept that the purpose of the Constitution is to limit the government, not limit the people. If you're on the verge of thinking we're losing that, then to me, that's it. That's ballgame. That's nutshell.

This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember it or overthrow it.

Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties. And not to Democrats alone do I make this appeal, but to all who love these great and true principles.

Again the institution of slavery is only mentioned in the Constitution of the United States two or three times, and in neither of these cases does the word "slavery" or "negro race" occur; but covert language is used each time, and for a purpose full of significance.

I believe that the Supreme Court and the advocates of that decision may search in vain for the place in the Constitution where the right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed.

Now my opinion is that the different States have the power to make a negro a citizen under the Constitution of the United States, if they choose.

Although the delegates appear to have assumed that the federal courts would exercise some form of judicial review over federal and state laws, Article III says nothing explicit on the subject. It states in broad terms that the federal courts' judicial power "shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties.

Once the Constitution was ratified, Congress quickly turned to the task of setting up a court system within the Article III framework. The Judiciary Act of 1789, often called the First Judiciary Act, established two tiers of lower courts: thirteen district courts that followed state lines, each with its own district judge, and three circuit courts, for the Eastern, Middle, and Southern Circuits.

As one leading Supreme Court scholar, Sanford Levinson, has noted, Supreme Court cases necessarily deal only with the "litigated Constitution," those provisions that are open to interpretation and become fodder for lawyers and judges.

As Burbank points out, relations between the branches are governed as much by norms and customs as by formal structures. The Constitution permits Congress to impeach and remove federal judges, for example, but the norm is that impeachment is reserved for criminal behavior or serious ethical lapses, and not for judicial rulings with which members of Congress disagree.

In addition to institutional embarrassment in many quarters, there was a particular irony to this failure of information. The Court's Eighth Amendment jurisprudence depends to a considerable measure on the justices' assessment of public opinion as reflected in statutes. A punishment that is demonstrably "unusual" is deemed constitutionally problematic.

When the Court has interpreted the Constitution, it has acted within the province of the Judicial Branch, which embraces the duty to say what the law is,