Sheldon Whitehouse Quotes

It's not about whether we should have a conservative or a liberal. It's about, do we have someone that has the mental acumen to understand what the laws are, and not write laws but defend the laws. That's the whole purpose of three branches of government.

You have a good judicial system in the U.S., as you have learned from the Nixon-Watergate period.

As President Franklin Delano Roosevelt learned when he tried to pack the Supreme Court, the three branches of government are coequal for a reason. Neither the executive branch or the legislative branch should use the third branch to a pursue a partisan agenda.

The president's powers are always open to being questioned by the co-equal branches of government.

The courts are supposed to be the inferior branch of our three branches of government.

We depend on the Supreme Court to uphold the integrity of our government.

Maintaining checks and balances on the power of the Judiciary Branch and the other two branches is vital to keep the form of government set up by our Founding Fathers.

The old Court you and I served so long will not be worthy of its traditions if Nixon can twist, turn and fashion If Nixon gets away with that, then Nixon makes the law as he goes along - not the Congress nor the courts.

The Supreme Court is a menace to the welfare of the nation.

The framers of our Constitution thought it was of critical, critical importance, in establishing three branches of government, that we have an independent judiciary. Therefore was that without that, the provisions of the constitution couldn’t be enforced

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.

The most important benefit that I can confer on the country by my Presidency is to insist upon the entire independence of the executive and legislative branches of government

The framers of the Constitution did not entrust this House with the power to impeach the President of the United States in order to establish this body as a court of personal morality.

The Presidency is for four years, but the Supreme Court is forever.

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.

In the government of this Commonwealth, the legislative department shall never exercise the executive and judicial powers, or either of them: The executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them: The judicial shall never exercise the legislative and executive powers, or either of them: to the end it may be a government of laws and not of men.

I think the founding fathers, in their genius, created a system of three co-equal branches of government and a built-in system of checks and balances.

The crowning feature of the federal system is the supremacy of the judiciary over all other branches of government in matters relating to the rights of persons and property.

We already have two branches of federal government that factor political considerations into their decision-making, and our Founding Fathers determined long ago that we don't need a third.

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.

Under our constitutional system, the executive executes the laws that Congress has passed. It should not be executing laws that Congress has rejected.

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.

It is not the role of Congress to decide legal cases between private parties. That is why we have courts.

If everyone in America can easily see who and what their lawmakers are requesting taxpayer money for, we can keep elected officials honest, end the days of political, special interest favors, and reduce wasteful spending.

I do believe that it was through divine providence that the Founding Fathers drafted a document that created a government that didn't trust each other - hence the separation of powers. And then, to close the deal, the Bill of Rights was added to continue to protect individual rights and freedoms.