Ruth Bader Ginsburg Quotes

The position the Government finds itself in is not one of constructing a law, but of carrying out a decision given by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.

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.

Judges will have the expounding of those laws when they come before them; and they will no doubt stop the operation of such as shall appear repugnant to the constitution.

… courts do not substitute their social and economic beliefs for the judgment of legislative bodies, who are elected to pass laws

A judge's role is to ensure that the legislature remains within the limits of its assigned authority under the Constitution. Judges have no authority to second-guess the wisdom of the value judgments and policy choices the legislature has made.

Let's get this straight now: a Senate impeachment trial is not a court of law. It's a court of politics.

We depend on the Supreme Court to uphold the integrity of our government.

If it be said that the legislative body are themselves the constitutional judges of their own powers, and that the construction they put upon them is conclusive upon the other departments, it may be answered, that this cannot be the natural presumption, where it is not be collected from any particular provisions in the Constitution.

Nothing has yet been offered to invalidate the doctrine that the meaning of the Constitution may as well be ascertained by the Legislative as by the Judicial authority.

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

An act of the legislature, repugnant to the Constitution, is void.

The right to decide what laws are constitutional, and what not, would make the judiciary a despotic branch.

State Legislatures were better qualified to elect the Members than the people were

The only representatives of the people of these colonies are persons chosen therein, by themselves; and that no taxes ever have been, or can be constitutionally imposed on them, but by their respective legislatures.

What Congress and the popular sentiment approve is rarely defeated by reason of constitutional objections.

No legislative act, therefore, contrary to the Constitution, can be valid.

The last I checked, this is an election, and in an election we play politics.

If, after a full and fair experiment shall be made of voting by ballot aforesaid, the same shall be found less conducive to the safety or interest of the State than the method of voting viva voce, it shall be lawful and constitutional for the legislature to abolish the same.

If there should happen to be an irreconcilable variance between the two [the Constitution and legislation], that which has superior obligation and validity ought, of course, to be preferred; or, in other words, the Constitution ought to be preferred to the statute, the intention of the people to the intention of their agents.

The fact that the most arbitrary powers of the English executive must always be exercised under Act of Parliament places the government, even when armed with the widest authority, under the supervision, so to speak, of the Courts. …. Parliament is supreme legislator, but from the moment Parliament has uttered its will as lawgiver, that will becomes subject to the interpretation put upon it by the judges of the land.

Every single election in every country has a component of a referendum in it.

[T]his Court may fall into error as may other branches of the Government.... The Court differs, however ... in its ability to extricate itself from error. It can reconsider.

The interpretation of the laws is the proper and peculiar province of the courts. A constitution, is, in fact, and must be regarded by the judges, as a fundamental law. It therefore belongs to them to ascertain its meaning, as well as the meaning of any particular act proceeding from the legislative body. If there should happen to be an irreconcilable variance between two, that which has the superior obligation and validity ought, of course, to be preferred; or, in other words, the constitution ought to be preferred to the statute, the intention of the people to the intention of their agents. Nor does this conclusion by any means suppose a superiority of the judicial to the legislative power. It only supposes that the power of the people is superior to both; and that where the will of the legislature, declared in its statutes, stands in opposition to that of the people, declared in the Constitution, the judges ought to be governed by the latter rather than the former. They ought to regulate their decisions by the fundamental laws, rather than by those which are not fundamental

I respect, too, the fact that in our legal order it is for Congress and not the courts to write new laws. It is the role of judges to apply, not alter, the work of the people's representatives.

We live in a period in which political disagreements are routinely handed over to the courts. Whenever you think that the president is wrong, you might well cry out that he has violated the Constitution - and ask federal judges to rule accordingly.