Nat Hentoff Quotes

Magna Carta has 63 clauses in abbreviated Latin. Two of them that are still on the statute book, numbers 39 and 40, could be said to have changed the way in which the free world has grown.

If the Constitution was a movie, the Preamble would be the trailer, the First Amendment the establishing shot, the 13th the crowd pleaser and the 14th the ultimate hero scene.

Bill of Rights was Madison, I'm going with Madison.

Our founders did not write that 'We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all US Persons are created equal.'

The Second Amendment is an integral part of the Bill of Rights.

I sort of thought the framers of the Constitution were talking about the rights of individuals, not corporate entities.

The Constitution of the United States was made by white men, the citizens and representatives of twelve slaveholding and one non-slaveholding State; and it was made for white men.

I think that he was responsible for putting the flesh and bones on the Constitution.

Founding Fathers

The Declaration of Independence is no part of the Constitution or of any other book.

restriction on the legislative power is not peculiar to the Constitution of the United States; it was borrowed from Magna Carta; was brought to America by our ancestors, as part of their inherited liberties, and has existed in all the States, usually in the very words of the great charter. It existed in every political community in America in 1787, when the ordinance prohibiting slavery north and west of the Ohio was passed

The [constitutional] safeguards of "due process of law" and "the equal protection of the laws" summarize the history of freedom of English-speaking peoples running back to Magna Carta and reflected in the constitutional development of our people.

The author of our constitution, James Madison, … would be aghast

Magna Carta decreed that no man would be imprisoned contrary to the law of the land …. Important as the principle was, the Barons of Rynnymede described no specific legal process to enforce it… Gradually the writ of habeas became the means by which the promise of Magna Carta was fulfilled.

Since the thirteenth century at least,--that is, since the Magna Carta,--England has been the bulwark of modern law.

I do think that Magna Carta and international law are worth paying some attention to.

I'm a lawyer, I practiced for many years, and so I believe in the Fifth Amendment.

The Second Amendment is not just words on parchment. It's not some frivolous suggestion from our Founding Fathers to be interpreted by whim. It lies at the heart of what this country was founded upon.

America is the proud possessor of the oldest extant written constitution in the world, which was for its time - 1787 - a highly innovative and important document.

Alexander Hamilton, of New York, a signer of the Constitution, was a member of the ratifying convention in his state and did more than any other member to wring the approval of the new instrument from delegates practically instructed by their constituents to vote against it.

In England and, later, the United Kingdom, Habeas Corpus is a right of great antiquity: Anyone who is arrested must be brought before a court, but this does not apply in continental countries.

Fundamental protections, the assumption of innocence, trial by jury, and the right to appear before a court have all been sacrificed on the altar of the E.U. superstate.

The two most important documents affecting the destiny of America are the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. Both these immortal papers relate primarily to the freedom of the individual.

The Bill of Rights never gets off the page and into the lives of most Americans.

We have not enjoyed unmolested those rights which the constitution of the U.S.A. and our Charters grant.