Laurence Tribe Quotes

I do not believe that the President has any powers at all except such as the Constitution expressly gives him or such as are necessarily inferred.

When a President asserts constitutional powers he needs to be pretty certain he has those powers.

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

The President [Theodore Roosevelt] has as much use for the Constitution as a tom cat has for a marriage license.

I do not believe that we [Congress] should allow him [the President] to nullify acts of Congress by executive fiat. There is not one syllable in the Constitution which authorizes the President to exercise such power.

... the opinion of the Supreme Court ... ought not to control the co-ordinate authorities of this Government. The Congress, the Executive, and the Court, must each be guided by its own opinion of the constitution.

The President may be right in how he reads the Constitution. But he also may be wrong. And if he is wrong, who is there to tell him so? And if there is no one, the President, of course, is free to pursue his course of erroneous interpretations. What then becomes of our constitutional form of government?

The Founders of this Nation entrusted the lawmaking power to the Congress alone in both good and bad times … the President's power to see that the laws are faithfully executed refutes the idea that he is to be a law-maker.

The Constitution gives the president the power to appoint, upon the advice and consent of a majority of the Senate, and it plainly does not give a minority of senators any right to interfere with that process.

If a president can enforce a part of a law and delay a part of a law, then does he have a power to not enforce any law he so chooses? If he can allow illegal aliens to freely run across our border, can he force legal citizens out of the country? Where would be the end of his power?

The courts are under the Constitution, not over it.

If the constitution does not give the court means equal to the political emergency of such cases, it is hardly worth spending any breath upon.

The respective powers of the President and Congress of the United States, in the case of war with foreign powers are yet undetermined. Perhaps they can never be defined.

Congressional power has not so much been usurped by the Presidency as given up to the Presidency by Congress.

[I am] against giving the power of war to the Executive, because [he is] not safely to be trusted with it.

The Constitution provided an invitation to the President and Congress to struggle for the privilege of directing American foreign policy.

We have not found a way to give Congress control without depriving the President of essential power.

It may be said, indeed, that the Constitution has given to the Executive the power to annul the acts of the legislative body by refusing to them his assent.

Every American war has brought a struggle between Congress and the Executive over war powers. The Constitution is somewhat annoyingly ambiguous on the point declaring that the President is Commander in Chief but empowering Congress to provide for the common defense, declare war, and raise and support armies.

He [the President] has the power, but that does not mean that he has the legitimate, constitutional right to use it.

It should be remembered that the president cannot, by executive order, do things that affects the public at large unless there is some Congressional basis for it.

President Obama is in violation of Section 3 of Article II of the Constitution by refusing to enforce the employer mandate provisions of Obamacare. The executive branch, which has no constitutional authority to write or rewrite law at whim, has usurped the exclusive legislative power of Congress.

Even the country's first president chafed at the limits placed on him by the writers of the U.S. Constitution. From the nature of the Constitution, ... I must approve all the parts of a bill, or reject it in toto.

I rise in support of the separation of powers as established by our Founding Fathers in the Constitution. The Constitution clearly delegates the power to deal with criminal matters, like the use of drugs, to the States.

And I think we as a people need to stop being disingenuous about what the Constitution provides for. It does not provide for this all-encompassing power that we've seen exercised over the last several decades. It's what's gotten us into this bankrupt position.