Liberty Quotes

"[I]f the policy of the government upon vital questions, affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made, in ordinary litigation between parties, in personal actions, the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal." -- Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) 16th US President Source: First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861, Washington, D.C.
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Abraham.Lincoln.Quote.8EAA

"When courts fail to engage in oversight or even distort the Constitution to rationalize the ultra vires actions of government, and when academics and political activists aid and abet them in this activity by devising ingenious rationalizations for ignoring the Constitution’s words, they are playing a most dangerous game. For they are putting at risk the legitimacy of the lawmaking process and risking the permanent disaffection of significant segments of the people." -- Brannon P. Denning Source: Brannon P. Denning, And Randy Barnett, CantThe Simple Cite Be Trusted?: Lower Court Interpretations of United States V. Miller and the Second Amendment, 26 Cumb. L. Rev. 961-1004 (1996). http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Brannon.Denning.Quote.FBD9

"You seem ... to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions; a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so. They have, with others, the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps.... Their power [is] the more dangerous as they are in office for life, and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves." -- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), US Founding Father, drafted the Declaration of Independence, 3rd US President Source: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Letter to William Jarvis (September 28, 1820).
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.0A9A