Constitutional Restraint Quotes

Let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.

The calculated killing of a human being by the state involves, by its very nature, an absolute denial of the executed person's humanity. The most vile murder does not, in my view, release the state from constitutional restraint on the destruction of human dignity.

The idea of restraining the Legislative authority [by the constitution], in the means of providing for the national defense, is one of those refinements, which owe their origin for a zeal for liberty more ardent than enlightened.

The object of a Constitution is to restrain the Government, as that of laws is to restrain individuals.

Conservatives who care about nominations of judges who practice judicial restraint are, constitutionally, restrained people themselves.

While President Barack Obama has, in one sense, tipped his hand by saying that he wants judges with "empathy" for certain groups, he has in a more fundamental sense concealed the real goal - getting judges who will ratify an ever-expanding scope of the power of the federal government and an ever-declining restraint by the Constitution of the United States. This is consistent with everything else that Obama has done in office and is consistent with his decades-long track record of alliances with people who reject the fundamentals of American society.

We the people decided at the founding of our nation to restrain our own majoritarian impulses. By enacting a Constitution, we intentionally tied our own hands so that there are certain things the majority may never do, like invade someone’s conscience. And if the majority—in its arrogance—should cross the line, the Supreme Court rightfully says no.

Our tenet ever was . . . that Congress had not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but were restrained to those specifically enumerated; and that, as it was never meant that they should provide for that welfare but by the exercise of the enumerated powers, so it could not have been meant they should raise money for purposes which the enumeration did not place under their action.