Mariano Rajoy Quotes

A decision reflects judicial restraint if it upholds practices under constitutional attack. A decision reflects judicial activism if it invalidates practices under constitutional attack.

Whether a law be void for its repugnancy to the Constitution, is, at all times, a question of much delicacy, which out seldom, if ever, to be decided in the affirmative, in doubtful case. ... But it is not on slight implication and vague conjecture that the legislature is to be pronounced to have transcended its powers, and its acts to be considered as void. The opposition between the Constitution and the law should be such that the judge feels a clear and strong conviction of their incompatibility with each other.

It is surely only a matter of time before some federal judge finds the Constitution unconstitutional.

I think it's unconstitutional on the 10th Amendment front.

When it comes to our Constitution, judges perform, certainly, an important role. But the people, acting through their elected representatives, should play an even more important role.

The propriety of a law, in a constitutional light, must always be determined by the nature of the powers upon which it is founded.

It was Thomas Jefferson who said that we should not allow the courts to have a monopoly on the interpretation of what is constitutional and what is not.

The American Constitution, one of the few modern political documents drawn up by men who were forced by the sternest circumstances to think out what they really had to face, instead of chopping logic in a university classroom.

The powers contained in a constitution...ought to be construed liberally in advancement of the public good.

The notion that the Supreme Court comes up with the ruling and that automatically subjects the two other branches to following it defies everything there is about the three equal branches of government. The Supreme Court is not the supreme branch. And for God's sake, it isn't the Supreme Being. It is the Supreme Court.

When did it become the law of the land that the Supreme Court has the final say on anything? They cannot have the final say on anything. The American people have the final say on anything.

Whether it is in the United States or in mainland Europe, written constitutions have one great weakness. That is that they contain the potential to have judges take decisions which should properly be made by democratically elected politicians.

Through its interpretation of the Constitution, the Supreme Court hugely shapes the fabric of our society for us and for future generations.

Well my question is if the federal courts don't have jurisdiction over a constitutional question then who the hell does?

It may seem ironic that the judicial branch preserves its legitimacy through refraining from action on political questions. That concept was put forward best by Justice [Felix] Frankfurter, appointed by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Well, let's see. There's-of course in the great history of America there have been rulings that's never going to be absolute consensus by every American, and there are those issues, again, like Roe v. Wade, where I believe are best held on a state level and addressed there. So, you know, going through the history of America, there would be others but...

When justices seize authority from the other branches of the federal government, as well as state and local governments, under the rubric of judicial review, that’s tyranny.

The Supreme Court has also issued and never reversed a number of decisions that are repugnant to the Constitution's vision of human dignity and equality.

The Constitution is what the judges say it is.

Constitutional interpretation is not the business of the Court only, but also properly the business of all branches of government.

The fact is that knowledge about the Constitution and the Court is not something that is handed down through the gene pool; every generation has to learn it. And I'm not sure the recent generations have done that good a job of learning about it.

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.

Invalidating laws has absolutely nothing to do with judicial activism. It depends on whether the law is unconstitutional or not. That's really the key point.

I think that the Court's task, in this as in all areas of constitutional adjudication, is not responsibly aided by the uncritical invocation of metaphors like the ' wall of separation,' a phrase nowhere to be found in the Constitution.

If Americans loved judicial activism, liberals wouldn't be lying about what it is. Judicial activism means making up constitutional rights in order to strike down laws the justices don't like based on their personal preferences. It's not judicial activism to strike down laws because they violate the Constitution.