Mike Huckabee Quotes

People assume that the executive branch has more power than it actually has. Only the legislative branch can create the laws; the executive branch cannot create the laws. So, if the executive branch tries to create a branch one side or the other... you go back to the founders of the nation. They set up a system that ensures that it doesn't happen.

The Founding Fathers provided a way to reverse unpopular Supreme Court decisions: a constitutional amendment.

Democracy demands that judges confine themselves to a narrow sphere of influence - that is why the late Alexander Bickel called the judiciary the 'Least Dangerous Branch.' In a world governed by a proper conception of their role, judges don't play at being legislators - they leave that job to our elected representatives.

I have very deep concern about the legacy of the Rehnquist court and its efforts to restrict congressional authority to enact legislation by adopting a very narrow view of several provisions of the Constitution, including the commerce clause and the 14th Amendment. This trend, I believe, if continued, would restrict and could even prevent the Congress from addressing major environmental and social issues of the future.

When the president acts in absence of a congressional grant of authority, he can rely only upon his own independent powers. When the president takes measures incompatible with the express or implied will of Congress, his power is at its lowest ebb.

The framers of our constitution had the sagacity to vest in Congress all implied powers: that is, powers necessary and proper to carry into effect all the delegated powers wherever vested.

I believe the two biggest mistakes made by the Founders were giving Federal judges life-time appointments and permitting them to be confirmed without the agreement of two-thirds of the members of the United States Senate.

If our forefathers had wanted Congress to be the Commander in Chief, they would have said so.

The federal courts do not sit as an ombudsman, refereeing the disputes between the other two branches.

We [the Supreme Court] may say that power to legislate for emergencies belongs in the hands of Congress, but only Congress itself can prevent power from slipping through its fingers.

I respect, too, the fact that in our legal order it is for Congress and not the courts to write new laws. It is the role of judges to apply, not alter, the work of the people's representatives.

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.

The President can exercise no power which cannot be fairly and reasonably traced to some specific grant of power in the Federal Constitution or in an act of Congress passed in pursuance thereof. There is no undefined residuum of power which he can exercise because it seems to him to be in the public interest.

Experience has instructed us that no skill in the science of government has yet been able to discriminate and define, with sufficient certainty, its three great provinces the legislative, executive, and judiciary; or even the privileges and powers of the different legislative branches.

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.

Under our Constitution, presidents have something called 'veto power.

The thing about an executive order - there has never been an executive order that a Congress couldn't say, "You know, we don't like that so we're going to do something else," if there is a majority in Congress to do something else.

[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.

Presidents Lincoln, Jefferson, Jackson, presidents have understood that the Supreme Court cannot make a law. They cannot make it. The legislature has to make it, the executive branch has to sign it and enforce it.

I'm a little uncomfortable with the idea of judges overruling presidents on national security matters.

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

Our Founding Fathers created the Executive Branch to implement and enforce the laws written by Congress, and vested this power in the president.

I wish the press were paying more attention to the erosion of the Constitution and the slippery slope that we're getting into, by giving up the right of the Congress to talk about when and how and where we go to war.

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.

The Constitution's pretty clear. The Federalist papers are pretty clear... They very specifically delegated the power to declare war to Congress. They wanted this to be a congressional decision; they did not want war to be engaged in by the executive without approval of Congress.