Erik Paulsen Quotes

[…] over the past decade, we’ve argued in court in favor of administrative latitude in decision-making. Now, by asserting the primacy of states rights, we’re flipping that argument on its head. How do we go back to all these cases where we’ve been arguing for executive discretion and say, “Oops, we didn’t mean it”?

Whenever there's a bad law, it can be repealed or nullified.

Don't count on Congress. Laws come into being because people on the ground demand it.

The government has the right to change laws and rules and regulations.

Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered.

If the House Republicans want to repeal the Affordable Care Act, they should make their case to the American people and elect a president and a majority in both Houses of Congress prepared to do that.

What right does Congress have to go around making laws just because they deem it necessary?

The House of Representatives has never sued a sitting president in all of U.S. history.

I know how to make sausage, and now that I've seen how laws are made, I'll stick with sausage.

If you can’t move the public, you can’t move the Congress.

When a treaty must depend for its execution ... on a law or laws to be passed by Congress ... it is the Constitutional duty of the House of Representatives to deliberate on the expediency of carrying such treaty into effect.

An investigation in which the processes of law-making and law-evaluating are submerged entirely in exposure of individual behavior—in adjudication, of a sort, through the exposure process—is outside the constitutional pale of congressional inquiry.

[Congressional] investigations only make it look like legislators have a solution.

The governor has led the way, but he's not an emperor. The legislature has to act. He cannot pass a bill by himself.

The authority of Congress must be respected …. The President must confine himself to his executive duties—to obey and execute, not make the laws.

They who make laws may without doubt amend or repeal them.

No society can make a perpetual constitution or even a perpetual law.

The legislature makes, the executive executes, and the judiciary construes the law.

Every law enacted by the General Assembly shall embrace but one subject.

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

In the government of this Commonwealth, the legislative department shall never exercise the executive and judicial powers, or either of them: The executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them: The judicial shall never exercise the legislative and executive powers, or either of them: to the end it may be a government of laws and not of men.

The President … does not originate laws or resolutions; he takes no part in the deliberations on them during their progress; he does not act in relation to them indirectly by advice or interference of any sort, until they have passed both houses: it is only when their operations are concluded that his power begins.

Men will pursue their interest. It is as easy to change human nature as to oppose the strong current of selfish passions. A wise legislature will gently divert the channel, and direct it, if possible, to the public good.

The government will certainly decide for itself on whose counsel they will settle the construction of the laws they are to execute. We are to look at the intention of the Legislature, and to carry it into execution while the lawyers are nibbling at the words of the law.

The purpose of privilege is not to place parliamentarians above the law, but rather to allow them to carry out their duties independently and effectively, in the national interest.