Constitutional Stability Quotes

If we do not adhere firmly to the constitution, our governments will not last long and will change frequently.

The Constitution that I interpret and apply is not living, but dead, or as I prefer to call it, enduring. It means, today, not what current society, much less the court, thinks it ought to mean, but what it meant when it was adopted.

… so as not to hazard the Constitution.

I deny that the power of amendment [of the Constitution] carries the power of revolution.

Our Constitution was not written in the sands to be washed away by each successive wave of new judges blown in by each successive political wind.

Temporary delusions, prejudices, excitements, and objects have irresistible influence in mere questions of policy. And the policy of one age may ill suit the wishes or the policy of another. The constitution is not subject to such fluctuations. It is to have a fixed, uniform, permanent construction. It should be, so far at least as human infirmity will allow, not dependent upon the passions or parties of particular times, but the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.

There is nothing stable but Heaven and the Constitution.

The transfer of power is always a test of the constitutional system, a test of its strength.

The Constitution poses no threat to our current form of government.

The commission shall be a joint investigation, as thorough and extensive as possible, of the facts relating to the origin and manifold ramifications of the revolutionary plots and demagogical associations directed against the existing constitution and the internal peace both of the union and of the individual states; of the existence of which plots more or less clear evidence is to be had already, or may be produced in the course of the investigation... .

It is foolishly thought by some that democratical constitutions will not, cannot, last; that the States will quarrel with each other; that a king, or at least a nobility, are indispensable for the prosperity of a nation.

The storm of frenzy and faction must inevitably dash itself in vain against the unshaken rock of the Constitution

Unfortunately, people are re-interpreting the Constitution as a living document, and it's not. It's a solid-based document and it shouldn't be played with.

This Constitution was not made for a day, nor is it composed of such flexible materials as to be warped to the purposes of a casually ascendant influence.

The Constitution is a document that should only be amended with great caution.

[T]he present Constitution is the standard to which we are to cling. Under its banners, bona fide must we combat our political foes - rejecting all changes but through the channel itself provides for amendments.

Vernon Bogdanor's account The Monarchy and the Constitution is written as much in the shadow of Edmund Burke as it is of Walter Bagehot. He stresses the organic development of the British constitution, prefers evolution to revolution, and thinks stability is better than strife.

I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and Constitutions.

If by the statement that what the Constitution meant at the time of its adoption it means today, it is intended to say that the great clauses of the Constitution must be confined to the interpretation which the framers, with the conditions and outlook of their time would have placed upon them, the statement carries its own refutation. It was to guard against such a narrow conception that Chief Justice Marshall uttered a memorable warning— ‘We must never forget that it is a Constitution we are expounding ... a constitution intended to endure for ages to come, and consequently to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs.’

Stability in law - particularly constitutional law - is critically important; the Supreme Court would do well to remember that.

If secession were allowed, the U. S. Constitution would be a mere rope of sand that would break with the first pressure.

Amendments to the Constitution ought not to be too frequently made ... [if] continually tinkered with it would lose all its prestige and dignity.

The storm of frenzy and faction must inevitably dash itself in vain against the unshaken rock of the Constitution.

Ten years ago, in the aftermath of the referendum in Quebec, the very existence of Canada was on the line... I had a responsibility to ensure that Canada never again came close to the precipice.

I support a constitutional conversation, as the Labour Party does, which will allow New Zealanders to evolve a more mature and stable constitutional form, but that's not something that I, as Labour Party, would want to impose, either on the party or on the public.