Constitutional Protections Quotes

The Court has long held that the Constitution protects certain fundamental rights that are not explicitly enumerated in the Constitution's text, while at the same time emphasizing that courts must proceed with great caution in recognizing such rights.

Granting such immunity undermines the constitutional protections Americans trust the Congress to protect.

The government was set to protect man from criminals-and the constitution was written to protect man from the government. The Bill of Rights was not directed at private citizens, but against the government-as an explicit declaration that individual rights supersede any public or social power.

There is no fear exception to the 4th Amendment of the Constitution.

The legal system we have and the rule of law are far more responsible for our traditional liberties than any system of one man one vote. Any country or Government which wants to proceed towards tyranny starts to undermine legal rights and undermine the law.

… due process of law is not for the sole benefit of an accused. It is the best insurance for the Government itself against those blunders which leave lasting stains on a system of justice but which are bound to occur on ex parte consideration

If National Security Agency (NSA) heads fundamentally lack an understanding of what constitutes constitutionally protected communications, or worse, chose to disregard those directives, then it's time for the appropriate heads of these agencies to resign.

Without the burden on the police to adhere to the requirements of the 4th Amendment, you loose the dogs.

One often-cited abuse of the [jury] nullification power is the acquittal by bigoted juries of whites who commit crimes (lynching, for example) against blacks. That repellent practice cannot be directly arrested without jeopardizing important constitutional protections.

… so as not to hazard the Constitution.

I do not like... the omission of a bill of rights providing clearly and without the aid of sophisms for freedom of religion, freedom of the press, protection against standing armies, restriction against monopolies, the eternal and unremitting force of the habeas corpus laws, and trials by jury in all matters of fact triable by the laws of the land …. A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular; and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inferences

There are unquestionable violations of our Constitution.

The truth is, after all the declamations we have heard, that the Constitution is itself, in every rational sense, and to every useful purpose, A BILL OF RIGHTS.

When the Chief Justice read me the oath and came to the words ‘support the Constitution of the United States’ I felt like saying: "Yes, but it's the Constitution as I understand it, flexible enough to meet any new problem of democracy--not the kind of Constitution your Court has raised up as a barrier to progress and democracy.”.

Laws and regulations are supposed to restrict the kind of surveillance governments do. In fact, the U.S. government is quite restricted in what kind of surveillance they can do on U.S. citizens. The problem is that 96 percent of the planet is not U.S. citizens.

The Constitution gives every American the inalienable right to make a damn fool of himself.

The public must know about the general outlines of surveillance activities in order to evaluate whether the government is achieving the appropriate balance between privacy and security.

There is no drug exception to the Constitution.

At least in Russia, you cannot just go and tap into someone's phone conversation without a warrant issued by court. That's more or less the way a civilized society should go about fighting terrorism.

The 'FISA Amendments Act' would gut the oversight system established by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, which subjected domestic spying to review by a special intelligence court.

From the Fourth Amendment to post-Watergate reforms to the national outcry when Bush's warrantless surveillance was revealed in 2005, the United States has a strong tradition of overseeing the government's power to spy on its citizens.

Individuals have rights and there are things no person or group may do to them (without violating their rights). So strong and far-reaching are these rights that they raise the question of what, if anything, the state and its officials may do. How much room do individual rights leave for the state?

When you're allowing the Executive Branch to deprive somebody of a constitutional liberty without any process, that is something that affects all Americans because that's a precedent that can be used.

In addition to protecting the rights of every citizen of our country, our Constitution makes the citizens of the country mindful of their duties.

Lawyers from the NSA, as well as the UK's GCHQ, work very hard to search for loopholes in laws and constitutional protections that they can use to justify indiscriminate, dragnet surveillance operations that were at best unwittingly authorized by lawmakers.