While democracy must have its organization and controls, its vital breath is individual liberty.

Even as Hughes expanded the regulatory power of the states he took a nationalist stance with respect to the authority of Congress over commerce including that within the various states. For example invoking police power arguments he upheld a Georgia statute requiring electric headlights on locomotives including those engaged in interstate commerce. Similar arguments appeared in the United States.

He was the Republican candidate in the 1916 U. S. Historian Clinton Rossiter has hailed him as a leading American conservative.