James Lankford Quotes

Unless the courts have the power to review the legislative and executive decisions of the nation, we do not have the rule of law… If we don’t follow our own rules, our own Constitution, then, my God, what are we fighting for?

The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.

We are a nation of laws.

I believe in enforcing the laws as written by the Legislature, as signed by the governor.

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

I learned a couple things. The government can do to you whatever they want. They can break the laws, federal laws, as they see fit... You can't turn laws on and off as you deem fit.

The Supreme Court, of course, has the responsibility of ensuring that our government never oversteps its proper bounds or violates the rights of individuals. But the Court must also recognize the limits on itself and respect the choices made by the American people.

The history of liberty has largely been the history of the observance of procedural safeguards.

I would rather see this administration turned out for enforcing laws can see a succeed for violating them.

Are all the laws to go unexecuted and the government itself go to pieces, lest civil liberties be violated?

You’ve got to have safeguards [on law enforcement authorities] if we’re going to continue to have the freedom we’ve had for the past 200 years.

Can it be pretended that it is any longer the government of the U.S., any government of Constitution and laws, wherein a General, or President, may make permanent rules of property by proclamation?

There is a problem. We do have this little thing called the Constitution.

The tradition of English-speaking freedom has depended in no small part upon the merely procedural requirement that the state point with exactness to just that conduct which violates the law. It is difficult and often impossible to meet the charge that one's general ethos is treasonable.

The most difficult thing to build up is the rule of law. America already had it when their nation began.

The President cannot refuse to enforce a law simply because he does not like it.

We are heirs to a tradition given voice 800 years ago by Magna Carta, which on the barons’ insistence confined executive power by the “law of the land”.

Are you willing to let any President choose what laws to enforce and what laws to change?

[In America] there is no end to the laws and no beginning to the execution of them.

The promise I've tried to honor my entire career, that the rule of law and the design of the founders, right, the oversight of courts and the oversight of Congress will be at the heart of what the FBI does.

Our Supreme Court has been very clear that the government can't just simply say something and make it so.

No one is above the law, not even the President.

We have to be a nation of laws.

The House Judiciary Committee is a great place to promote our core principles of constitutionally limited government, individual freedom and the rule of law.

Rule of law has prevailed over Obama's unconstitutional executive overreach.