Thomas Jefferson Quotes

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.

[T]he opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves, in their, own sphere of action, but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch.

The question whether the judges are invested with exclusive authority to decide on the constitutionality of a law has been heretofore a subject of consideration with me in the exercise of official duties. Certainly there is not a word in the Constitution which has given that power to them more than to the Executive or Legislative branches.

The judicial power of every well-constituted government must be coextensive with the legislative, and must be capable of deciding every judicial question which grows out of the Constitution and laws.

The constitution, on this hypothesis, is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please.

What I reject, out of hand, is the idea that by 5 to 4 Supreme Court judges can rewrite the Constitution, but it takes two-thirds of the House and two-thirds of the Senate and three-fourths of the States to equal 5 judges.

There's no such thing as judicial supremacy.

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.

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

When we surrender moral government to the courts, we have surrendered the very essence of freedom; we have surrendered its only real meaning, and we will not be free again until we get it back.

It's a matter of balance of power. If the Supreme Court could just make a ruling and everybody has to bow down and fall on their faces and worship that law, it isn't a law because it hasn't been yet passed.

Judges wear legal professionalism and precedent as a mantel that secures legitimacy for their decisions. It's how they distinguish themselves from politicians or administrative agencies, while wielding power that is sometimes much greater than those democratically accountable actors.

We often imagine that the court serves as a sort of neutral umpire controlling the warring political branches. But this is mostly myth. The justices of the Supreme Court are themselves actors in the struggle for power, and when they intervene, they think carefully about how their decisions will affect the court's own legitimacy and authority.

The [Supreme] Court is no longer primarily a legal institution but rather a political and cultural power.

The reach of judicial power extends only so far as the executive is willing to enforce it.

The appelate jurisdiction of the Supreme Federal Court, includes an unwarrantable stretch of power over the liberty, life, and property of the subject, through the wide Continent of America.

The most fundamental question of all the legitimacy of judicial review itself.

Judicial activism must be lessened, and the judiciary should do its work and let politicians work.

A judge's role is to ensure that the legislature remains within the limits of its assigned authority under the Constitution. Judges have no authority to second-guess the wisdom of the value judgments and policy choices the legislature has made.

Anyone who has followed my work knows that I'm an advocate of reducing the power of the High Court of Justice, according to the principle of separation of powers.

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 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.

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.

It is far more rational to suppose that the courts were designed to be an intermediate body between the people and the legislature, in order, among other things, to keep the latter within the limits assigned to their authority.

The debate over judicial nominations is a debate over the judiciary itself. It is a debate over how much power unelected judges should have in our system of government, how much control judges should have over a written constitution that belongs to the people.