James Madison Quotes

The [Federal] constitution and the laws thereof are supreme ... they control the constitution and laws of the respective states, and cannot be controlled by them.

This setting of State laws above the guarantees of the National Constitution is one of the forms of 'State Rights' which has already wrought so much evil to the country. Unless the United States is held as superior to States, we have no nation; we are merely a confederation of States…

a vile law system, calculated for expense and with a design to draw by degrees all law business into the Federal Courts. The Constitution is meant to swallow all the State Constitutions by degrees.

Nullification is the Jeffersonian idea that the states of the American Union must judge the constitutionality of the acts of their agent, the federal government, since no impartial arbiter between them exists.

We considered the Alien and Sedition Acts as so palpably against the Constitution as to amount to an undisguised declaration that that compact is not meant to be the measure of the powers of the General Government, but that it will proceed in the exercise over these States of all powers whatsoever... We view this as seizing the rights of the States and consolidating them in the hands of the General Government

The Constitution preserves the autonomy and independence of the States; “federal supervision of their action” is in no case permissible except as to matters specifically delegated to the United States. Any interference ... except as thus permitted is an invasion of the authority of the States

A difference must be made between a decision against the constitutionality of a law of Congress and of a State. The former acts as a restriction on the powers of this government, but the latter as an enlargement.

I wonder much that a court of Law should be in doubt whether a Resolution of Congress can superceed the Law of a Sovereign State.

For six years the senators are rendered totally and absolutely independent of their States, of whom they ought to be the representatives, without any bond or tie between them: During that time they may join in measures ruinous and destructive to their States, even such as should totally annihilate their State governments, and their States cannot recall them, nor exercise any controul over them.

It is a fundamental principle of American law that the regulation of the local police of all the domestic affairs of a State belong to the State itself, and not to the Federal Government.

We are not at liberty to add one jot of power to the national government beyond what the people have granted by the constitution

If Congress were to go beyond the delegated powers ... if they were to make a law not warranted by the powers enumerated, it would be considered by the judges as an infringement of the Constitution ... They would declare it void

If the Federal Legislature should, at any time, pass a Law contrary to the Constitution of the United States, such Law would be void.

The bill is incapable of being executed …. It proceeds entirely upon the idea that the State governments will lend their aid to carry it into effect.

Our Constitution does not contain the absurdity of giving power to make laws and another to resist them.... The Father of His Country [George Washington] did not affix his revered name to so palpable an absurdity. Nor did the states, when they severally ratified it, do so under the impression that a veto on the laws of the United States was reserved to them or that they could exercise it by implication.

The peculiar circumstances of the moment may render a measure more or less wise, but cannot render it more or less constitutional.

An act of the legislature, repugnant to the Constitution, is void.

Judges will have the expounding of those laws when they come before them; and they will no doubt stop the operation of such as shall appear repugnant to the constitution.

[The new Federal Government] would either triumph over the state governments and reduce them to entire subordination or in the course of a few years … the contests about the boundaries of power between the particular [State] governments and the general government … will produce a dissolution of the union.

What other influence over, or check upon the General Government. will the States possess, if their Legislatures do not elect the Senate or second Branch of the National. Government.

the several states who formed that instrument, being sovereign and independent, have the unquestionable right to judge of its infraction; and that a nullification, by those sovereignties, of all unauthorized acts done under colour of that instrument, is the rightful remedy:

The Federal Constitution has stood the test of more than a hundred years in supplying the powers that have been needed to make the Central Government as strong as it ought to be, and with this movement toward uniform legislation and agreements between the States I do not see why the Constitution may not serve our people always.

Our whole history tells us that the national government has been far less corrupt and incompetent than state and local government … Time and time again the federal government has had to rescue people from the states and local governments. If we left it to the states, we would still have slavery.

James Madison was pessimistic about the country when he could not get accepted his proposal to allow the Congress to veto state laws.

The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. –