John Marshall Quotes

When a law is in its nature a contract, when absolute rights have vested under that contract, a repeal of the law cannot divest those rights.

Of the powers conferred upon the General Government by the Constitution of the United States much the most important are those given to the legislative body.

The right of petition, I have said, was not conferred on the People by the Constitution, but was a pre-existing right, reserved by the People out of the grants of power made to Congress.

Judges who take the law into their own hands, who make up constitutional 'rights' in order to strike down laws they oppose, undermine the people's right to have their values shape public policy and define the culture.

England is the model from which impeachment has been borrowed.

The Constitutional Convention is the only vehicle through which we can get a clear-cut and unequivocal decision of the people.

The President ... should be merely the executor of a power of decision that rests elsewhere; that is, in the Congress.

The Executive should be able to be removed from office by the national Legislature, on the Petition of seven States.

… courts do not substitute their social and economic beliefs for the judgment of legislative bodies, who are elected to pass laws

Whatever the People has last ordained shall be held as binding by law.

Upon subjects of government, it has always appeared to me that metaphysical refinements are out of place. A Constitution of government is addressed to the common sense of the people; and never was designed for trials of logical skill or visionary speculation.

The general laws of the kingdom may be enacted only with the consent of the king and the nation. If the king proposes a law, the nation accepts or rejects it; if the nation demands a law, it is for the king to consent or to reject it

If there should happen to be an irreconcilable variance between the two [the Constitution and legislation], that which has superior obligation and validity ought, of course, to be preferred; or, in other words, the Constitution ought to be preferred to the statute, the intention of the people to the intention of their agents.

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.

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

The fundamental division of powers in the Constitution of the United States is between voters on the one hand and property owners on the other.

Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence and deem them like the Ark of the Covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment.

When it comes to the separation of powers, the Constitution makes it look pretty simple: Congress makes the laws, the president enforces them and the judiciary adjudicates them. In reality, though, the lines between the branches are a little blurrier than they seem on paper.

I am strongly pro-life, and I am not pro-gay marriage. I believe the issue of marriage must be decided by the states and by the people in the states - not by judges and not even by legislators, but by the people themselves.

The whole body of the nation is the sovereign legislative, judiciary, and executive power for itself. The inconvenience of meeting to exercise these powers in person, and their inaptitude to exercise them, induce them to appoint special organs to declare their legislative will, to judge and to execute it. It is the will of the nation which makes the law obligatory.

The Legislative cannot transfer the Power of Making Laws to any other hands. For it being but a delegated Power from the People, they who have it, cannot pass it over to others. The People alone can appoint the Form of the Commonwealth, which is by Constituting the Legislative, and appointing in whose hands that shall be.

The constitution of the United States declares that "no State shall pass any law impairing the obligation of contracts."

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

The American Constitution is a written instrument full and complete in itself. No Court in America, no Congress, no President, can add a single word thereto, or take a single word threreto. It is a great national enactment done by the people, and can only be altered, amended, or added to by the people.