James Q. Wilson Quotes

Specifically, the reservation of sovereignty to the people of the states in matters not governed by federal law is constitutionally defined and permanently enshrined in the 10th Amendment.

A constitution, in the American sense of the word, is a written instrument by which the fundamental powers of the government are established, limited, and defined, and by which these powers are distributed among several departments, for their more safe and useful exercise, for the benefit of the body politic.

The Constitution in all its provisions looks to an indestructible union disposed of indestructible States.

The exercise of the appellate power over those judgments of the state tribunals which may contravene the Constitution or laws of the United States is, we believe, essential …

The Supreme Court has been clear that states have the right to protect their citizens against out-of-state regulations that would burden those citizens.

A difference must be made between a decision against the constitutionality of a law of Congress and of a State. The former acts as a restriction on the powers of this government, but the latter as an enlargement.

I also believe that the Supreme Court should be the final arbiter of all federal questions.

The United States Constitution has proved itself the most marvelously elastic compilation of rules of government ever written.

No one branch of the U.S. government should have supremacy over the other two.

If you could say of any one individual that the court as an institution is the length and shadow of that individual, surely it would be John Marshall.

Nullification is the Jeffersonian idea that the states of the American Union must judge the constitutionality of the acts of their agent, the federal government, since no impartial arbiter between them exists.

The Founding Fathers didn’t intend for the lawyers to run this country

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.

The federal constitution is perhaps the greatest of human experiments.

We can't have a referendum on every important question. This is a republic, not a democracy. This is Chicago, not California.

The Supreme Court follows the election returns.

Our fundamental instrument of government [the Constitution] is an evolving document.

Our government is composed of checks …

I consider ... the power to annul a law of the United States, assumed by one state, incompatible with the existence of the Union, contradicted expressly by the letter of the Constitution, unauthorized by its spirit, inconsistent with every principle on which it was founded, and destructive of the great object for which it was formed.

The judiciary of the United States is the subtle corps of sappers and miners constantly working underground to undermine the foundations of our confederated fabric.

a vile law system, calculated for expense and with a design to draw by degrees all law business into the Federal Courts. The Constitution is meant to swallow all the State Constitutions by degrees.

as a barrier between the central government and the respective states and their citizens.

The Supreme Court of the United States is the tribunal to decide such questions. We [Republicans] will submit to its decisions; and if you [Democrats] do also, there will be an end of the matter.

[The new Federal Government] would either triumph over the state governments and reduce them to entire subordination or in the course of a few years … the contests about the boundaries of power between the particular [State] governments and the general government … will produce a dissolution of the union.

The whole point of the Constitution is to limit at some point and in some way popular will.