Legislative Limitations Quotes

What Congress and the popular sentiment approve is rarely defeated by reason of constitutional objections.

No merely legislative body could control a single, concentrated Executive ….

The prize for ultimate inefficiency goes to America. We have built in so many checks and balances that our 'leaders' are the most thoroughly hogtied of any on Earth.

I do not believe that the President has any powers at all except such as the Constitution expressly gives him or such as are necessarily inferred.

Parliamentary representatives of the Communist Party shall not introduce or support reform measures.

The American Constitution is a written instrument full and complete in itself. No Court in America, no Congress, no President, can add a single word thereto, or take a single word threreto. It is a great national enactment done by the people, and can only be altered, amended, or added to by the people.

The General Assembly shall have no power to pass laws for the emancipation of slaves

I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their Legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.

All the legislation in the world cannot fix what is wrong with America.

There never was a law yet made, I conceive, that hit the taste exactly of every man, or every part of the community; of course, if this be a reason for opposition, no law can be executed at all without force

The case was always a difficult one, but the form the opinions took would seem to indicate such a marked cleavage in the Supreme Court that it may be, and probably is, a forecast of what we may expect with reference to almost any form of social legislation that Congress may enact. Apparently there are at least four justices who are against any attempt to use the power of the federal government for bettering general conditions, except within the narrowest limitations. This is a terrific handicap and brings up again, rather acutely, matters we have previously discussed, including a proposed constitutional amendment .

I can't legislate to change human nature.

Most people don't realize, I really have no faith in politics. I'm not a politician. If I thought you could change human hearts by laws, I would, but I don't.

Regulating the prices of goods in general would be an endless task, and no legislator has ever been weak enough to think of attempting it.

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

I, along with many of my Republican colleagues, believe there is so much more we can do for those who are trapped in our social safety net programs. But we are limited by the level of discourse with which of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle are willing to engage.

But the wisdom and authority of the legislator are seldom victorious in a contest with the vigilant dexterity of private interest.

People think of politicians having true power, but that's less and less true. After all, they are often constrained or being edged into a corner by a whole series of contingencies.

Congressional anarchy must be curtailed.

Economic depression cannot be cured by legislative action or executive pronouncement. Economic wounds must be healed by the action of the cells of the economic body - the producers and consumers themselves.

You can't legislate against stupidity, but we try to do it all the time.

In the U.S., free speech and the press are protected by the First Amendment. It has a clarity unmatched by modern legislators and declares that 'Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or the press.'

Statesmen and legislators, standing so completely within the institution, never distinctly and nakedly behold it. They speak of moving society, but they have no resting-place without it. They may be men of a certain experience and discrimination, and have no doubt invented ingenious and even useful systems, for which we sincerely thank them; but all their wit and usefulness lie within certain not very wide limits. They are wont to forget that the world is not governed by policy and expediency.

Most Americans, who think Congress has a right to do anything for which they can get a majority vote, ignore the clearly written constitutional restraints on Congress.

As long as we look to legislation to cure poverty or to abolish special privilege we are going to see poverty spread and special privilege grow.