Lysander Spooner Quotes

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.

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

In the Constitution of the United States, Negroes are referred to as fellows although the word 'slave' is carefully avoided before the thirteenth amendment.

Every state has an undoubted right to determine the status, or domestic and social condition, of the persons domiciled within its territory except insofar as the powers of the states in this respect are restrained, or duties and obligations imposed upon them, by the Constitution of the United States.

Even if the Constitution of the United States had intended to recognize slavery, as a constitutional state institution, such intended recognition would have failed of effect, and been legally void, because slavery then had no constitutional existence to be recognized.

No one familiar with the common law of England can read the Constitution of the United States without observing the great desire of the Convention which framed that instrument to make it conform as far as possible with that law.

The Emancipation Proclamation is predicated upon the idea that the President may so annul the constitutions and laws of sovereign states, overthrow their domestic relations, deprive loyal men of their property, and disloyal as well, without trial or condemnation.

People seem to be concerned about the Constitution of the United States only when it pertains to something that is of concern to them.

I couldn't vote to confirm any candidate who supports executive amnesty. The attorney general is a top law enforcement officer in this country - the senior person - and anyone who occupies that office must have fidelity to the laws of the United States duly passed, and to the Constitution of the United States.

The United States government can indict you on something, and now you've got to prove your innocence. And that's not the Constitution of the United States.

The ultimate touchstone of constitutionality is the Constitution itself and not what we have said about it.

Over the course of 19 years on the Supreme Court, I learned some lessons about the Constitution of the United States.

Slavery existed before the formation of this Union. It derived from the Constitution that recognition which it would not have enjoyed without the confederation. If the States had not united together, there would have been no obligation on adjoining States to regard any species of property unknown to themselves.

I do stand in opposition to those who want to implement Sharia and essentially attack the Constitution of the United States.

It is my privilege to have introduced House Resolution 1612 honoring the Constitution of the United States, and the freedoms and rights it has given to every American.

I deem it established, then, that the Constitution does not recognize property in man, but leaves that question, as between the states, to the law of nature and of nations.

With one terrible exception, the Civil War, law and the Constitution have kept America whole and free.

The Supreme Court of the United States, in a recent case, has, by a decision of seven to two of the Judges, established as law what our Southern statesmen have been repeating daily for many years on the floors of Congress, that the whole action of this Government on the subject of slavery, for more than a quarter of a century, from the initiation of the Missouri Restriction in 1822, to the California Compromise in 1850, has been all beyond the limits of the Constitution; was without justifiable authority; and that the whole mass should be now proclaimed null and void, and that slavery is guaranteed by the constitutional compact.

It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of the recent decision of the Supreme Court. The grounds and methods of that decision we have exposed elsewhere; and we now turn from them to contemplate the great fact which it establishes -- the fact that Slavery is National; and that, until that remote period when different Judges, sitting in this same Court, shall reverse this wicked and false judgment, the Constitution of the United States is nothing better than the bulwark of inhumanity and oppression.

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

The framers of the constitution were very literate men and they could write very well. When they wrote that “Congress shall make NO LAW respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press,” they meant NO LAW. If they had wanted to have some laws or an emergency law, they would not have written, “NO LAW.” They were expert at the English language.

They---the northern states---will never consent, that a slave-owner, his agent, or an officer of the United States, armed with process to arrest a fugitive from service, is clothed with entire immunity from state authority; to commit whatever crime or outrage against the laws of the state; that their own high prerogative writ of habeas corpus shall be annulled, their authority defied, their officers resisted, the process of their own courts contemned, their territory invaded by federal force, the houses of their citizens searched, the sanctuary or their homes invaded, their streets and public places made the scenes of tumultuous and armed violence, and state sovereignty succumb--paralyzed and aghast--before the process of an officer unknown to the constitution and irresponsible to its sanctions. At least, such shall not become the degradation of Wisconsin, without meeting as stern remonstrance and resistance as I may be able to interpose, so long as her people impose upon me the duty of guarding their rights and liberties, and maintaining the dignity and sovereignty of their state.

No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.

The protection of the writ of Habeas Corpus is denied married women in every State of this Union, notwithstanding the Constitution of the United States declares it shall not be suspended except when, in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety demands it.

The Constitution of the United States [is] the result of the collected wisdom of our country.