Warren G. Harding Quotes

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

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.

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

Our constitution is a conservative document. It's a document which is established to maintain the status quo unless a an overwhelming majority to change that status quo can be martialed.

The notion that a person's constitutional rights may be subject to a majority vote is itself anathema.

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

When we talk about the Constitution of the United States, we are sometimes apt to quote—"Vox populi, vox Dei;" that is, The voice of the people is the voice of God. But in some places they ought to say, VOX POPULI, VOX DIABOLI; that is, the voice of the people is the voice of the Devil.

The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials …

… courts today are less inclined to allow majoritarian coercion of unpopular or disliked minority groups, especially when blatant racism . . . religious prejudice, or some other constitutionally suspect motivation, can be discovered behind such legislation

Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.

Popularity makes no law invulnerable to invalidation. Americans accept judicial supervision of their democracy - judicial review of popular but possibly unconstitutional statutes - because they know that if the Constitution is truly to constitute the nation, it must trump some majority preferences.

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.

Minority rights are just as important as majority decisions.

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 federal constitution is perhaps the greatest of human experiments.

The majority are not morally free to become a tyranny and destroy the rights of minorities.

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

In a Constitution for a free people, there can be no doubt that the meaning of ‘liberty’ must be broad indeed.

The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and peace.

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

The [constitutional] safeguards of "due process of law" and "the equal protection of the laws" summarize the history of freedom of English-speaking peoples running back to Magna Carta and reflected in the constitutional development of our people.

The rights given in the Constitution are given to all people—the most popular and the least popular.

The rights to life, liberty and property were not meant to be subject to the vagaries of majority rule.

… by a free country I mean a country where people are allowed, so long as they do not hurt their neighbors, to do as they like. I do not mean a country where six men may make five men do exactly as they like. That is not my notion of freedom.

Democracy is better than tyranny.