Legislative Prerogative Quotes

Are you willing to let any President choose what laws to enforce and what laws to change?

The court's authority must be clear, and it must not blatantly intervene in the decisions of the legislative and executive branches.

Centrally, I cannot interfere in states.

I am not responsible to the Senate and will not submit my actions to them.

It is not my call ... it is not for the judicial branch to decide.

The War Powers Act requires presidents to seek the consent of the American people, through their representatives, before sending our troops into war. It is the responsibility of Congress to deliberate and consult with the executive branch before involving ourselves in a military conflict.

I decline submitting my officials rights and powers to the determination of a coordinate department, usurping a jurisdiction unprecedented in the history of our country, and fraught with the greatest danger to our institutions. I shall deem it my imperative duty to repel, with all of the force vested in this department, any infringement upon my rights and powers.

As anyone familiar with my scholarship knows, I am not a huge fan of inherent powers in most contexts.

Legislatures now pass statutes because of, not despite, their lack of clarity. By using vague language, legislators can avoid making the difficult political choices that they have to confront when drafting a statute precisely.

As a member of this court I am not justified in writing my private notions of policy into the Constitution, no matter how deeply I may cherish them.

Under our constitutional system, the executive executes the laws that Congress has passed. It should not be executing laws that Congress has rejected.

The Supreme Court and courts in general have been usurping the role of the legislative branch of government.

In our constitutional system, states are free to make decisions and bear the political consequences, good or bad, of those choices.

… the most disastrous blow ever struck at the constitutional power of Congress

In very rare circumstances, the executive branch might choose to ignore a court decision.

Whenever the words of a law will bear two meanings, one of which will give effect to the law, and the other will defeat it, the former must be supposed to have been intended by the Legislature, because they could not intend that meaning, which would defeat their intention, in passing that law; and in a statute, as in a will, the intention of the party is to be sought after

It is not the Congress's job to rubber stamp bad decisions [of the President.]

The president does not have the option of choosing which laws he will follow and which he will ignore.

But if I had committed a breach of privilege, it was the privilege of the Senate, and not of this House, which was violated. I was answerable there and not here.

Legislative power is always superior to the executive.

Parliament alone is sovereign.

The modern presidency, as expressed in the policies of the administration of George W. Bush, provides the strongest piece of evidence that we are governed by a fundamentally different Constitution from that of the framers.

They who make laws may without doubt amend or repeal them.

Federal judges will never be so wild, so absurd, so mad as to pretend that they are superior to the legislative power of America.

The House of Representatives was not designed to sit idly by and rubberstamp every piece of legislation sent their way by the Senate, especially legislation passed on a straight party line vote under the spurious policy of reconciliation.