Mark Davis Quotes

My feeling is that the judge has a responsibility to the Constitution first, precedent second. Precedent is one factor. It is not the only factor. If it was the only factor, then, you know, we wouldn't have had Roe vs. Wade. We wouldn't have had Griswold. We wouldn't have had Lawrence. We wouldn't have had all these cases which the Left love.

If the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the Nation ... be not the guide in expounding it, there can be no security for a consistent and stable government, more than for a faithful exercise of its powers

Nobody knows exactly what that means ... It has become a wish list for people who want things in the Constitution.

Our greatest present disloyalty to the Constitution lies in the fact that we do not study and criticize it as did the men who devised and adopted it. They met novel and desperate situations by establishing unheard-of and revolutionary forms of government.

We can’t trust government to limit its powers to the Constitution.

Anybody who questions the validity of the Constitution, whether it works in the modern era, should never be president.

We have to have a good look at the Constitution. Let's determine where the shortcomings are. Then we can start talking of clauses.

The ultimate touchstone of constitutionality is the Constitution itself and not what we have said about it.

Outside of the Constitution we have no legal authority more than private citizens, and within it we have only so much as that instrument gives us. This broad principle limits all our functions and applies to all subjects.

No one supposes that the government of the United States is supreme, beyond the sphere plainly defined by the constitution: Neither does any one deny that the State is supreme within its proper sphere of action.

I created no authority that wasn't already there under the constitution.

Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is, that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us.

You may say to the people, that I have received their petition. You may remind them, also, that I am acting in accordance with the constitution. It is necessary for me to defend those rights of mine that are guaranteed by that constitution, even at the sacrifice of everything that I possess, and of my own person.

The appropriate relation of the exercise of constitutional power to the legitimate objects of that power is always a subject of judicial scrutiny.

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

Where in the Constitution does it give the federal government the right to be involved with crime control to begin with.

A new world has come into being since the Constitution was adopted. Are the narrow, limited necessities of the old thirteen states ... to remain the rule of interpretations?

People seem to be concerned about the Constitution of the United States only when it pertains to something that is of concern to them.

I could not do otherwise without transcending the limits prescribed by the Constitution for the President and without feeling that I might in some degree disturb the security which religion nowadays enjoys in this country in its complete separation from the political concerns of the General Government.

… tough times is a strong argument with many of us to stretch the Constitution

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

David Addington does not believe in the Constitution

The words of the Constitution ... are so unrestricted by their intrinsic meaning or by their history or by tradition or by prior decisions that they leave the individual Justice free, if indeed they do not compel him, to gather meaning not from reading the Constitution but from reading life.

I think it is up to the judge to say what the Constitution provided, even if what it provided is not the best answer, even if you think it should be amended. If that's what it says, that's what it says.

Is there a man who will say that the Constitution wants no reform? Will any man be found to say that the Constitution is perfect?