John Marshall Quotes

The important distinction so well understood in America between a constitution established by the people, and unalterable by the government; and a law established by the government, and alterable by the government, seems to have been little understood and less observed in any other country. Wherever the supreme power of legislation has resided, has been supposed to reside also, a full power to change the form of government.

The Supreme Court, once in existence, cannot be abolished, because its foundation is not in an act of the legislative department of the Government, but in the Constitution of the United States.

The constitution is either a superior paramount law, unchangeable by ordinary means, or it is on a level with ordinary legislative acts, alterable when the legislature shall please to alter it. It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is. This is the very essence of judicial duty.

The framers of our Constitution foresaw this state of things and provided for it by declaring the supremacy not only of itself but of the laws made in pursuance of it. The nullity of any act inconsistent with the Constitution is produced by the declaration that the Constitution is supreme law.

It would be a novel and dangerous doctrine that a legislature could change the constitution under which it held its existence.

Constitutional interpretation ... is a process of holding an actual government within certain bounds.

The interpretation of the laws is the proper and peculiar province of the courts. A constitution, is, in fact, and must be regarded by the judges, as a fundamental law. It therefore belongs to them to ascertain its meaning, as well as the meaning of any particular act proceeding from the legislative body. If there should happen to be an irreconcilable variance between two, that which has the superior obligation and validity ought, of course, to be preferred; or, in other words, the constitution ought to be preferred to the statute, the intention of the people to the intention of their agents. Nor does this conclusion by any means suppose a superiority of the judicial to the legislative power. It only supposes that the power of the people is superior to both; and that where the will of the legislature, declared in its statutes, stands in opposition to that of the people, declared in the Constitution, the judges ought to be governed by the latter rather than the former. They ought to regulate their decisions by the fundamental laws, rather than by those which are not fundamental

Whenever you hear a man prating about the Constitution, spot him as a traitor.

The interpretation of the laws is the proper and peculiar province of the courts. A constitution is, in fact, and must be regarded by the judges, as fundamental law. It therefore belongs to them to ascertain its meaning, as well as the meaning of any particular act proceeding from the legislative body. If there should happen to be an irreconcilable variance between the two, that which has the superior obligation and validity ought, of course, to be preferred; or, in other words, the Constitution ought to be preferred to the statute, the intention of the people to the intention of their agents.

How odd that Americans, and not just their presidents, have come to think of their Constitution as something separable from the government it's supposed to constitute. In theory, it should be as binding on rulers as the laws of physics are on engineers who design bridges; in practice, its axioms have become mere options. Of course engineers don't have to take oaths to respect the law of gravity; reality gives them no choice. Politics, as we see, makes all human laws optional for politicians.

The Constitution overrides a statute, but a statute, if consistent with the Constitution, overrides the law of judges. In this sense, judge-made law is secondary and subordinate to the law that is made by legislators.

Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government.

The government of the Union, though limited in its powers, is supreme within its sphere of action, and its laws, when made in pursuance of the constitution, form the supreme law of the land.

It is time... to end the long-standing and unproductive methodological debate over 'originalism' versus 'dynamism' or 'evolution' and focus instead on how, as a substantive matter, we should interpret the Constitution in the twenty-first century, and what it has to say on questions unimaginable to our eighteenth-century Framers.

You Americans have wrong ideas of the nature of your constitution. The instructions given to colonial governors were the law of the land and colonial legislatures have no right to ignore them.

An act of Congress is binding upon all as much as if it were included … in the Constitution itself.

The judicial power of every well-constituted government must be coextensive with the legislative, and must be capable of deciding every judicial question which grows out of the Constitution and laws.

Legislative power is always superior to the executive.

All constitutional laws are binding on all the people, in the new States and in the old ones, whether they consent to be bound by them or not.

Conservative Supreme Court Justices have overturned many more decisions arrived at by legislative majorities then have liberal justices.

Save the Constitution from the Court and the Court from itself.

We cannot afford to have some future Amendment, destructive of our whole theory of government, manipulated through the requisite number of legislatures, with the people standing helpless to prevent it.

Original intent is a necessary fiction that jurists have invented to get a handle on the Constitution.

It has been the judiciary that has preserved the Constitution rather than the other two separated powers.

People assume that the executive branch has more power than it actually has. Only the legislative branch can create the laws; the executive branch cannot create the laws. So, if the executive branch tries to create a branch one side or the other... you go back to the founders of the nation. They set up a system that ensures that it doesn't happen.