William Clark Quotes

The Constitutional Convention is the only vehicle through which we can get a clear-cut and unequivocal decision of the people.

I used to have a great fear of constitutional conventions. I have a great fear now of not having one.

The path to an amendment to the Constitution is a thorny one.

The real difficulty is not with the Constitution but with the judges who interpret it.

I deny that the power of amendment [of the Constitution] carries the power of revolution.

I get nervous every time we start tinkering with the Constitution.

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

The peculiar circumstances of the moment may render a measure more or less wise, but cannot render it more or less constitutional.

This [nullification] is a normal and traditional American method of circumventing the inflexibility of the Constitution. When the Constitution has come into conflict with the living needs of the nation, and when amendment was impossible, the method of changing the Constitution has been to change it and then get the very human Supreme Court to sanction it.

It would be proper to make the adjudications of the State Judges, appealable to the national Judicial.

The Constitution is a document that should only be amended with great caution.

All of the legal defense funds out there, they're looking for people out there with court of appeals experience, because court of appeals is where policy is made. And I know, I know this is on tape and I should never say that because we don't make law, I know. I know.

Just because a couple people on the Supreme Court declare something to be 'constitutional' does not make it so.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the most liberal and illumined of the nine Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court.

I do not have, nor do I believe I have seen, a vision capacious and convincing enough to propound as an organizing principle for the next phase in the law of our Constitution.

Do judges follow the Constitution? Well, Yes and No. They follow the Constitution as they understand it.

I cannot recall ever seeing the words “state soverigenty” in the Federal Constituiton. I taught the subject for years, and studied the Constitutional Convention and I don’t ever remember seeing that term.

Day by day, case by case, the Supreme Court is designing a constitution for a country that I do not recognize.

A permanent constitution must be the work of quiet, leisure, much inquiry, and great deliberation.

People now do not want a constitution framed for them by their representatives—they want to pass on each section of it themselves.

A changeless constitution becomes the protector not only of vested rights but of vested wrongs.

We seem to grant less than half a dozen folks in black robes across the street, the right to amend [the Constitution] any time they change their mind.

It is highly improper of the President of the United States to employ extra-legal pressures in an effort to defeat the amendment …. The President has no constitutional role to play in the amending process.

Our constitution is a conservative document. It's a document which is established to maintain the status quo unless a an overwhelming majority to change that status quo can be martialed.

The American Constitution has changed, is changing, and by the law of its very existence must continue to change, in its substance and practical working even its words remain the same.