John Rutledge Quotes

This is the opinion that established the supremacy of the Supreme Court over state courts in Constitutional matters. There was an alternative view then that states were sovereign entities and their courts decisions could not be reviewed or overridden by the Federal courts. This case settled that issue,

This concept of balance of power and the equal role of the judiciary is actually quite rare. Even in Parliamentary democracies the parliament can override any court interpretation. In England, the upper legislative house, the House of Lords, actually serves as the nation’s highest or supreme court. And these “Law Lords” can override all regular judicial bodies.

Cummings was arguing against a Constitutional amendment. His alternative led to Roosevelt's court packing schema.

Marshall is famous for, as Chief Justice, establishing the principle that the Judiciary can override Congress and the Executive in determining Constitutionality. However, as this quotation illustrates this principle had been discussed in open debate on the ratification of the Constitution. It was not simply a grab for power by a Chief justice; he uttered this quotation long before he ever suspected he would be a judge but actually spent much of his career in the executive and legislative branch of government.

One of the conundrums of our constitutional system is who has the last word as to what the Constitution means. Essentially it is the judicial branch headed by the Supreme Court. But there are those who believe that the current popular majority should have a say in what is or is not constitutional. If so the legislative branch should have the last word. Still others say that the President is the only person elected by ALL the people, so his opinion most reflects the will of the public. And then there are most who argue that the Constitutional system was created just to avoid the power of currently popular majorities, and the courts should decide based on the Constitution itself. So the statement has very little meaning except that Phillips thinks that the courts have too much power. Whoever gets to decide what is or is not Constitutional will be accused of being “over” the Constitution by those who don’t like the decisions. In our system, that is the courts.

When asked for his position on abortion, candidate Bush answered:. Nine years later, President Bush proposed a constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court's ruling on flag desecration.

The Supreme Court took only 10 weeks to unanimously reverse this decision.

On June 12, 1789 a Senate committee proposed a federal court system for the nation. Maclay described it as:

David Souter was an outstanding Supreme Court Justice—a lifelong Republican appointed by a Republican President. He did not vote the way Erickson thought he should. There was never any hint of any kind of sexual problem with Souter, and why Erickson chose to slander him with these descriptors is not known. One unproven theory is that some Souter votes and opinions upheld the First Amendment freedoms of pornographers and therefore by supporting these practices being promulgated, Erickson thought that he believed they were worthy themselves. Fortunately, Souter was so well thought off that only a few right wing extremists took these lies for what they were. What is important about this quotation is that Erickson did not lose any standing within the Conservative wing of the Republican party as a result of these rash slanders that were in themselves in terrible taste and crudely expressed. The Daily Telegraph of London put Erickson on its "List of Most Influential US Conservatives", giving him a rank of 69th most influential in 2007 and 65th in 2010. This crude lie was made in 2009. The Republican Party traditionally would never tolerate this kind of rhetoric but after the Southern Strategy, the party grew more and more extremist in its views and more and more vicious and unethical in its political methods.