Interstate Relations Quotes

We are not a nation, but a union, a confederacy of equal and sovereign states.

A husband and wife may be divorced and go out of the presence and beyond the reach of each other, but the different parts of our country can not do this. They can but remain face to face, and intercourse, either amicable or hostile, must continue between them.

Globalization has rendered the world increasingly interdependent, but international politics is still based on the sovereignty of states.

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.

We cannot accede to the proposition ... that the citizens of the several states are permitted to participate in all the rights which belong exclusively to the citizens of any other particular state.

Using the Japan-U.S. alliance as a basis, it is important that we maintain and develop cooperative relations with our neighboring countries such as China, South Korea, and Russia.

I may add that we have more than once stated our willingness to conclude nonaggression pacts with the states neighboring our own!

Conflicting commercial regulations of the different States shackled and diminished both foreign and domestic trade; hence the power to regulate commerce was conferred.

If we are in earnest about giving the Union energy and duration we must abandon the vain project of legislating upon the States in their collective capacities.

All foreign policy is the intervention of one nation's domestic politics into another nation's domestic politics.

The concepts of "democracy promotion" and "transformational diplomacy" pursued by the George W. Bush Administration conditioned interstate relations on altering any system of government that did not match Washington's understanding of democracy.

Things are different in the international relations between states. In this respect, I am neither a friend, nor bride or groom [of the West].

It is important to strengthen the State governments; and as this cannot be done by any change in the Federal Constitution (for the preservation of that is all we need contend for), it must be done by the States themselves, erecting such barriers at the constitutional line as cannot be surmounted either by themselves or by the General Government. The only barrier in their power is a wise government. A weak one will lose ground in every contest.

When any one state in the American union refuses obedience to the Confederation, by which they have bound themselves, the rest have a natural right to compel them to obedience.

The powers of Congress are totally inadequate to preserve the balance between the respective States, and oblige them to do those things which are essential for their own welfare or for the general good.

It has been observed, [that for the federal government] to coerce the States is one of the maddest projects that was ever devised.

In undertaking the regulation of inter-State commerce, Congress is entering upon a new and untried field.

In 1939 Winston Churchill, describing the 5000-mile peaceful border dividing Canada and the United States, said, 'That long frontier from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans, guarded only by neighborly respect and honorable obligations, is an example to every country and a pattern for the future of the world.

Congress has the power to legislate with regard to activity that, in the aggregate, has a substantial effect on interstate commerce.

In relations between the states ... the interests of the country should be correlated with the interests of other countries, and compromise is to be found when resolving the most complex issues.

The Federal Constitution forms a happy combination in this respect; the great and aggregate interests being referred to the national, the local and particular, to the state legislatures.

Virginia States' rights, as our forefathers conceived it, was a protection of the right of the individual citizen. Those who preach most frequently about states' rights today are not those seeking the protection of the individual citizen, but his exploitation. The time is long past — if indeed it ever existed — when we should permit the noble concept of states' rights to be betrayed.

I believe the states can best govern our home concerns, and the general government our foreign ones.

When the balance of power is right and the government is right sized, California still can be California. It can be, in my opinion, as crazy as it wants to be. And Texas, in other's opinion, can be as crazy as it wants to be. But we're still brothers in the union.

The public affairs of the union are spread throughout a very extensive region, and are extremely diversified by the local affairs connected with them, and can with difficulty be learnt in any other place, than in the central councils, to which a knowledge of them will be brought by the representatives of every part of the empire. Yet some knowledge of the affairs, and even of the laws of all the states, ought to be possessed by the members from each of the states.