Linda Colley Quotes

WHEREAS in all other Things, we require the said General Assembly, as also the said Council of State, to imitate and follow the Policy of the Form of Government, Laws, Customs, and Manner of Trial, and other Administration of Justice, used in the Realm of England, as near as may be, even as ourselves, by his Majesty's Letters Patent, are required.

Although England, and the rest of the United Kingdom, possesses momentous constitutional texts and significant statutes, since the 1600s there has been no systematic attempt to codify the powers and limits of the British executive and the rights of those it governs.

In the absence of a written constitution, we still rely far too heavily in the U.K. on unwritten and unenforceable 'constitutional conventions.'

The British constitution has always been puzzling and always will be.

The Magna Carta is widely known to be one of the foundational documents for our Constitution. I can only imagine that a mention of that in a court decision would be forbidden by our friends on the right.

The liberties, franchises, and privileges of parliament are the ancient and undoubted birth-right and inheritance of the subjects of England.

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.

I have great respect for British political institutions. I regard the British Parliament as the most democratic institution in the world, and the independence and impartiality of its judiciary never fail to arouse my admiration.

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

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.

As the British Constitution is the most subtle organism which has proceeded from progressive history, so the American Constitution is the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.

My touchstone for every question is the Constitution.

The first democratic revolution was England in the 1640s.

The Bill of Rights was intended to secure freedom of speech - the freedom of speech of members of parliament to speak freely rather than be at threat of... the threat of an over powerful monarch at the time.

The very purpose of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution is to protect minority rights against majority voters. Every court decision that strikes down discriminatory legislation, including past Supreme Court decisions, affirming the fundamental rights to marry the person you love, overrules a majority decision.

We have to worry about protecting the Constitution.

Magna Carta is such a fellow that he will have no sovereign.

The Constitution is simply a sign that says “keep off the grass.”

The English constitution is founded on the principle of choosing a single sovereign authority and making it good.

The Constitution is a list of things the government may not do.

The right to sue is one of the great natural rights going back to the Magna Carter and the government should not interfere with that.

The English Parliament in 1641 created judges for life. Before that, judges could be and were sacked.

The Constitution of the United States is not a suicide pact.

In the British government, the danger of encroachment on the rights of the people, is understood to be confined to the executive magistrate. The representatives of the people in the legislature, are not only exempt themselves, from distrust, but are considered as sufficient guardians of the rights of their constituents against the danger from the executive. Hence, it is a principle, that the parliament is unlimited in its power, or, in their own language, is omnipotent. Hence, too, all the ramparts for protecting the rights of the people, such as the Magna Carta, their Bill of Rights &c., are not reared against the parliament, but against the royal prerogative.

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.