Michael Kinsley Quotes

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.

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 Supreme Court has been clear that states have the right to protect their citizens against out-of-state regulations that would burden those citizens.

The Supreme Court has never ruled that Congress can use the Commerce Clause to require individuals to engage in an activity they have chosen to avoid. Yet that is precisely what Obamacare does: It forces Americans without health insurance to purchase coverage. Such a requirement is unprecedented and unconstitutional.

I would like to see more judicial activism because I want to see more laws struck down.

a vile law system, calculated for expense and with a design to draw by degrees all law business into the Federal Courts. The Constitution is meant to swallow all the State Constitutions by degrees.

The Supreme Court of the United States is the tribunal to decide such questions. We [Republicans] will submit to its decisions; and if you [Democrats] do also, there will be an end of the matter.

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.

Judicial review has developed since the 1970s as a way for individuals to challenge decisions taken by the State.

I have very deep concern about the legacy of the Rehnquist court and its efforts to restrict congressional authority to enact legislation by adopting a very narrow view of several provisions of the Constitution, including the commerce clause and the 14th Amendment. This trend, I believe, if continued, would restrict and could even prevent the Congress from addressing major environmental and social issues of the future.

I would introduce and support legislation to send Roe v. Wade back to the states.

If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually anything-and the Federal Government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers.

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.

I think it's unconstitutional on the 10th Amendment front.

A Supreme Court justice must convince at least four colleagues to bind the federal government nationwide, whereas a district court judge issuing a nationwide injunction needn't convince anyone.

Conservatives like to insist that their judges are strict constructionists, giving the Constitution and statutes their precise meaning and no more, while judges like Ms. Sotomayor are activists. But there is no magic right way to interpret terms like 'free speech' or 'due process' - or potato chip.

If judicial review means anything, it is that judicial restraint does not allow everything.

In 1787, many Americans were convinced that the 'perpetual union' they had created in winning independence was collapsing. Six years earlier, in the Articles of Confederation, the thirteen state governments had surrendered extensive powers to a congress of delegates from each state legislature.

The Supreme Court is the last line of defense for the separation of powers and for the rights and liberties guaranteed by the Constitution.

Judges should decide legal disputes. Judges should not make law.

Many studies or theories by political scientists fit some subset of cases that a court decides, but literally no theory can account for all of them, particularly when it comes to studying a complex institution like the Supreme Court.

Judges are either partial to the Constitution or they aren't; they either believe that the document is perfect in its form and that rights like free speech don't ebb in and out of style - or they believe that it's an anachronistic document in a world that needs a malleable, living Constitution.

The left loves the courts. They hate constitutional limited government.

In a system of precedent, the new majority bears the weight of explaining why the constitutional vision of their predecessors was flawed and of making the case as to why theirs better captures the meaning of our fundamental law.

I think our founding fathers believed in nullification. There's no doubt about that.