Alex Kozinski Quotes

Conservatives who believe that the Constitution should be interpreted according to the plain meaning of its language and the original intent of the Framers have long been troubled by the court's decisions expanding the commerce clause to authorize Congress to regulate the most local of matters within a state's borders.

The appropriate relation of the exercise of constitutional power to the legitimate objects of that power is always a subject of judicial scrutiny.

Congress has the power to legislate with regard to activity that, in the aggregate, has a substantial effect on interstate commerce.

And I think we as a people need to stop being disingenuous about what the Constitution provides for. It does not provide for this all-encompassing power that we've seen exercised over the last several decades. It's what's gotten us into this bankrupt position.

The attack on ObamaCare was that Congress does not have the power under the Commerce Clause to force a private citizen into a private contractual relationship. If such a thing is permitted to stand, the anti-ObamaCare forces argue, there will be no limit to Congress's power in the future.

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.

I think the federal government should be doing only what the Constitution says it should be. We don't have authority under the federal Constitution to have a big federal criminal justice system.

The logic is often far-fetched - how does medical marijuana affect interstate commerce? - and some conservatives would like judges to start throwing out federal laws wholesale on commerce clause grounds. The court once again said no thanks.

The Supreme Court, in 2005, emphasized and contrasted the great power of Congress under the Commerce Clause to regulate interstate commerce versus much more limited federal power under the discarded Articles of Confederation.

The public welfare demands that constitutional cases must be decided according to the terms of the Constitution itself, and not according to judges’ views of fairness, reasonableness, or justice.

If the constitution does not give the court means equal to the political emergency of such cases, it is hardly worth spending any breath upon.

Constitutional interpretation ... is a process of holding an actual government within certain bounds.

When you are talking about constitutional law, you are talking about the balance of power in the community and the question of how you find meaning boils down concretely here to who finds the meaning.

Aided by a little sophistry on the words "general welfare," the federal government claims a right to do not only the acts to effect that which are specifically enumerated and permitted, but whatsoever they shall think or pretend will be for the general welfare.

Search the Constitution and you will find no power granted to the legislative branch to make laws governing agriculture, housing, medicine, energy, private ownership or weapons, and a great deal more.

I start with a concern about the growth of federal government. I start with a perspective concerned about the growth of that power, and containing it within the bounds of the Constitution.

Wringing your hands about states' rights, forget it. They're gone. Basically, the federal government can do whatever it wants. Who's going to protect the states? My court? Ha - we're feds!

The Supreme Court overrules, distinguishes, and upholds prior precedents. Sometimes it ignores them. But it does not - cannot - 'defy' them.

The framers never intended an infinitely broad Commerce Clause that would let Congress dictate individuals' purchases.

There's no such thing as judicial supremacy.

The regulation of commerce, it is true, is a new power; but that seems to be an addition which few oppose and from which no apprehensions are entertained.

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.

The Constitution is what the judges say it is.

If the Bill of Rights was intended to place strict limits on federal power and protect individual and locality from the national government the 14th Amendment effectively defeated that purpose by placing the power to enforce the Bill of Rights in federal hands, where it was never intended to be.

It is very certain that [the commerce clause] grew out of the abuse of the power by the importing States in taxing the non-importing, and was intended as a negative and preventive provision against injustice among the States themselves, rather than as a power to be used for the positive purposes of the General Government.