Constitutional Check Quotes

The filibuster is the most important check on raw Presidential power.

I have two basic votes before I vote: is it constitutional, and is it in the interests of my people. If the answer is yes to both of them, then I vote for it, and I don't care who authored it.

I created no authority that wasn't already there under the constitution.

The peculiar circumstances of the moment may render a measure more or less wise, but cannot render it more or less constitutional.

The veto is a President’s Constitutional right, given to him by the drafters of the Constitution because they wanted it as a check against irresponsible Congressional action. The veto forces Congress to take another look at legislation that has been passed.

Invalidating laws has absolutely nothing to do with judicial activism. It depends on whether the law is unconstitutional or not. That's really the key point.

We electors have an important constitutional power placed in our hands; we have a check upon two branches of the legislature.

The powers relating to impeachment are an essential check in the hands of the body of the legislature against and upon the encroachments of the executive.

Narrow scope of judicial power was the reason that people accepted the idea that the federal courts could have the power of judicial review; that is, the ability to decide whether a challenged law comports with the Constitution.

No free people ever existed, or can ever exist, without keeping the purse strings in their own hands. Where this is the case, they have a constitutional check upon the administration, which may thereby by brought into order without violence. But when such a power is not lodged in the people, oppression proceeds uncontrolled in its career, till the governed, transported into rage, seek redress in the midst of blood and confusion.

Not that I distrust the King, but that I cannot give trust except in a parliamentary way.

Judges will have the expounding of those laws when they come before them; and they will no doubt stop the operation of such as shall appear repugnant to the constitution.

The [founding] fathers hoped not to create a system of party government under a constitution, but rather a constitutional government that would check and control parties.

That this privilege of giving or of withholding our monies is an important barrier against the undue exertion of prerogative, which if left altogether without control may be exercised to our great oppression; and all history shews how efficacious is its intercession for redress of grievances and re-establishment of rights, and how improvident would be the surrender of so powerful a mediator

Experience has already shown that the impeachment the Constitution has provided is not even a scarecrow.