Trey Gowdy Quotes

Mayors do not have that authority to pick and choose what laws they're going to enforce.

I learned a couple things. The government can do to you whatever they want. They can break the laws, federal laws, as they see fit... You can't turn laws on and off as you deem fit.

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.

What right does Congress have to go around making laws just because they deem it necessary?

The President has no authority to direct anyone to disobey the law.

But the king should not be under any man, only under God and the law, for the law makes the king. Let the king therefore attribute to the law what the law attributes to him, namely lordship and power, for there is no king where will rules and not the law.

The ruling authority is liable to raise a claim which could justify a deviation from the law by saying: The law is supposed to serve the country. The law is merely one consideration, there are additional considerations which are no less important; the good of the country is one such consideration and it could possibly override the law….this is a very dangerous claim. The saying that patriotism is the last refuge of the charlatan is well known. This argument, taken alone, is liable to topple the principle of the legality of government and the rule of law together with it.

It's not so much the attorney general's job to decide what laws to enforce. We should do our jobs and enforce laws effectively as we're able.

When you know the law, you're above the law. When you break the law, you're under the law.

I care not who makes th' laws iv a nation, if I can get out an injunction.

The government has the right to change laws and rules and regulations.

All I can say is that with business and the interest of any party before me, I will consider and apply the law as it is written by Congress and informed by precedent.

The constitution controls any legislative act repugnant to it.

The Supreme Court, in 2005, emphasized and contrasted the great power of Congress under the Commerce Clause to regulate interstate commerce versus much more limited federal power under the discarded Articles of Confederation.

The old Court you and I served so long will not be worthy of its traditions if Nixon can twist, turn and fashion If Nixon gets away with that, then Nixon makes the law as he goes along - not the Congress nor the courts.

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.

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

Though in many other countries everything is left in the breast of the Judge to determine, yet with us he is only to declare and pronounce, not to make or new-model the law.

Judges ought to remember that their office is Ius dicere and not Ius dare; to interpret law, and not to make law, or give law.

The Constitution is ... power. That is why we see political struggle over the selection of judges who will wield that power.

A Senator is not God or a doctor.

They who possess the prince possess the laws.

Legislative power is always superior to the executive.

All constitutional acts of power, whether in the executive or judicial department, have as much legal validity and obligation as if they proceeded from the legislature.

But what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external controls nor internal controls on government would be necessary.