Constitutional Bounds Quotes

Judges are required by our democratic system not to overstep their positions to become policy makers or super-legislators.

I had rather ask an enlargement of power from the nation, where it is found necessary, than to assume it by a construction which would make our powers boundless.

There are limits, beyond which, if parliaments go, their acts bind not.

I start with a concern about the growth of federal government. I start with a perspective concerned about the growth of that power, and containing it within the bounds of the Constitution.

That every tax imposed upon English subjects without consent is against the natural rights and the bounds prescribed by the English constitution. That the Stamp Act in special, is a tax imposed on the colonies without their consent. That it is the duty of every person in the colonies to oppose by every lawful means the execution of those acts imposed on them…

Constitutional interpretation ... is a process of holding an actual government within certain bounds.

The power of the legislative being derived from the people by a positive voluntary grant and institution, can be no other than what that positive grant conveyed, which being only to make laws, and not to make legislators, the legislative can have no power to transfer their authority of making laws, and place it in other hands.

To take a single step beyond the boundaries specially drawn around the powers of Congress is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible to definition.

This Court always had disavowed the right to intrude its judgment upon questions of policy or morals