James Bryce Quotes

It is wrong to say that the Constitution will change with the times. It will be, illuminated by the times.

If by the statement that what the Constitution meant at the time of its adoption it means today, it is intended to say that the great clauses of the Constitution must be confined to the interpretation which the framers, with the conditions and outlook of their time would have placed upon them, the statement carries its own refutation. It was to guard against such a narrow conception that Chief Justice Marshall uttered a memorable warning— ‘We must never forget that it is a Constitution we are expounding ... a constitution intended to endure for ages to come, and consequently to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs.’

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

The genius of the Constitution rests not in any static meaning it might have had in a world that is dead and gone, but in the adaptability of its great principles to cope with current problems and current needs.

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

This [nullification] is a normal and traditional American method of circumventing the inflexibility of the Constitution. When the Constitution has come into conflict with the living needs of the nation, and when amendment was impossible, the method of changing the Constitution has been to change it and then get the very human Supreme Court to sanction it.

… they are terrified lest the Constitution be interpreted as it was meant to be interpreted in each age according to that period's own ideas instead of those of the past generation. It seems to me it would be more intelligent to be afraid lest we strangle democracy by letting a fossilizing process harden the Constitution into a cocoon which must be violently broken because it could not grow with the life within. Life implies growth, and the Constitution was never meant to be used as the Bible was by our most puritanical Puritans.

In a very real sense, the Constitution is our compact with history ... [but] the Constitution can maintain that compact and serve as the lodestar of our political system only if its terms are binding on us. To the extent we depart from the document's language and rely instead on generalities that we see written between the lines, we rob the Constitution of its binding force and give free reign to the fashions and passions of the day.

The Constitution is a document that should only be amended with great caution.

A constitutional tradition that works is one that is in a constant state of dynamic evolution. You have a written constitution that says 'x,' but no constitutional system works if it just follows what's in that written constitution and never changes. Interpretation gives it the freedom to change.

The [Supreme] Court did not interpret the Constitution—the court amended it.

A new world has come into being since the Constitution was adopted. Are the narrow, limited necessities of the old thirteen states ... to remain the rule of interpretations?

A constitution … is good for a certain people and for a certain time. It shouldn’t be mummified.

It is a further boast that a regular mode of making proper alterations has been providently inserted into the Constitution itself.

We must never forget that it is a constitution we are expounding ... a constitution intended to endure for ages to come, and consequently, to be adopted to the various crises of human affairs.

The only way to amend the Constitution … is by the method provided in the Constitution.

A constitution is not to be made to mean one thing at one time and another some subsequent time when the circumstances may have changed…. the meaning of the Constitution is fixed when it is adopted.

… we strangle democracy by letting a fossilizing process harden the Constitution into a cocoon which must be violently broken because it could not grow with the life within. Life implies growth, and the Constitution was never meant to be used as the Bible was by our most puritanical Puritans. The letter killeth. Do these people really want to be ruled by a frozen document?

Liberals see the Constitution itself as 'living' and 'evolving' that is, gradually turning into something that would have been unrecognizable to its authors.

I used to say that the Constitution is not a living document. It's dead, dead, dead. But I've gotten better. I no longer say that. The truth is that the Constitution is not one that morphs. It's an enduring Constitution, not a changing Constitution. That is what I've meant when I've said that the Constitution is dead.

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.

The Constitution was made for an undefined and expanding future ... ... is not a fixed formula defined with finality at a particular time. It does not reflect, as a congealed summary, the social arrangements and beliefs of a particular epoch ... The effect of changes in men’s feelings for what is right and just is equally relevant in determining whether a discrimination denies the equal protection of the laws.

To insert essential principles only, lest the operation of government should be clogged by rendering those provisions permanent and unalterable which ought to be accommodated to times and events.

I think that he was responsible for putting the flesh and bones on the Constitution.

The (Supreme) Court has shown in the past that the Constitution can also be twisted to frustrate the needs of democracy