Tyrone Brown Quotes

The U.S. constitution is an extraordinary document. In my view, it should not be amended often.

The Constitution was essentially an economic document based upon the concept that the fundamental rights of private property are anterior to government and morally beyond the reach of popular majorities.

The prohibitions of the Constitution were put in place precisely to prevent majority opinion from ruling certain areas of life.

Ours is a constitutional freedom where the popular will is the law supreme and minorities are sacredly protected.

The layman's constitutional view is that what he likes is constitutional and that which he doesn't like is unconstitutional.

The Constitution was framed fundamentally as a bulwark against governmental power.

The purpose of a written constitution is to bind up the several branches of government by certain laws, which, when they transgress, their acts shall become nullities; to render unnecessary an appeal to the people, or in other words a rebellion, on every infraction of their rights, on the peril that their acquiescence shall be construed into an intention to surrender those rights.

A changeless constitution becomes the protector not only of vested rights but of vested wrongs.

The federal constitution is perhaps the greatest of human experiments.

The Supreme Court is the living voice of the Constitution—that is, of the will of the people expressed in the fundamental law they have enacted. It is ... the conscience of the people.... It is the guarantee of the minority who, when threatened by the impatient vehemence of the majority, can appeal to this permanent law, finding the interpreter and enforcer thereof in a Court set high above the assaults of faction.

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

The Constitution is a list of things the government may not do.

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

If there be any who deny its [the Constitutions's] necessity, none can deny its authority.

Only its [the Constitution's] great outlines should be marked, its important objects designated, and the minor ingredients which compose those objects be deduced by the nature of the objects themselves.

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

The Constitution of the United States is not a suicide pact.

The Constitution is not just a legal argument. It is a set of norms and practices and it’s a political document…

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.

Our constitution got built around the idea of minority protection.

Constitutions should consist only of general provisions; the reason is that they must necessarily be permanent, and that they cannot calculate for the possible change of things.

Our new constitution is founded principally on those of England and the United States of America, but avoiding the faults and errors of both, and adapted as much as possible to the local and particular circumstances of the country

A constitution is framed for ages to come, and is designed to approach immortality as nearly as human institutions can approach it. Its course cannot always he tranquil. It is exposed to storms and tempests, and its framers must be unwise statesmen indeed if they have not provided it, so far as its nature will permit, with the means of self preservation from the perils it may be destined to encounter.

The Constitution lies at the core of our civil religion.

The Constitution is simply a sign that says “keep off the grass.”