Authority Quote by Alexander Hamilton

[T]here is not a syllable in the plan under consideration which directly empowers the national courts to construe the laws according to the spirit…

— Alexander Hamilton

The sovereignty of the States is the language of the Confederacy and not the language of the Constitution. The latter contains the emphatic words.…

— Andrew Johnson

What all these lofty and vague phrases boil down to is that the court can impose things that the voters don't want and the…

— Thomas Sowell

So that the executive and legislative branches of the national government depend upon, and emanate from the states. Every where the state sovereignties are…

— Joseph Story

The particular phraseology of the Constitution of the United States confirms and strengthens the principle, supposed to be essential to all written constitutions, that…

— John Marshall

The Court's decision reflects the philosophy that judges should endure whatever interpretive distortions it takes in order to correct a supposed flaw in the…

— Antonin Scalia

The Constitution is what the judges say it is.

— Charles Evans Hughes

A judge must interpret statutes as written. And a judge must interpret the Constitution as written, informed by history and tradition and precedent.

— Brett Kavanaugh

As a matter of law the states recognized no constraints on their legislative scope other than those that were self-imposed. Even where particular state…

— Immanuel Wallerstein

The constitution of the United States is to receive a reasonable interpretation of its language, and its powers, keeping in view the objects and…

— Anonymous

The Constitution is the origin and measure of legislative authority. It says to legislators, thus far ye shall go and no farther. Not a…

— William Paterson

As the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial departments of the United States are co-ordinate, and each equally bound to support the Constitution, it follows that…

— James Madison