#constitution

I'm tired of being considered some kind of criminal or dangerous throwback for no other reason than that I value, exercise, and defend my rights under the first ten Amendments to the United States Constitution. ↗

— L. Neil Smith

#considered #constitution #criminal #dangerous #defend

The Constitution provides for freedom of religion, not freedom from religion. ↗

— Lamar S. Smith

#freedom #freedom from #freedom of religion #provides #religion

Fundamental ideas are not a consequence of experience, but a result of the particular constitution and activity of the mind, which is independent of all experience in its origin, though constantly combined with experience in its exercise. ↗

— William Whewell

#combined #consequence #constantly #constitution #exercise

It is time... to end the long-standing and unproductive methodological debate over 'originalism' versus 'dynamism' or 'evolution' and focus instead on how, as a substantive matter, we should interpret the Constitution in the twenty-first century, and what it has to say on questions unimaginable to our eighteenth-century Framers. ↗

— Diane Wood

#constitution #debate #dynamism #end #evolution

The particular aspect of history which both attracts and benefits its readers is the examination of causes and the capacity, which is the reward of this study, to decide in each case the best policy to follow. Now in all political situations we must understand that the principle factor which makes for success or failure is the form of a state's constitution: it is from this source, as if from a fountainhead, that all designs and plans of action not only originate but reach their fulfillment. ↗

— Polybius

#history #political-science #design

The first grand federalist design...was that of the Bible, most particularly the Hebrew Scriptures or Old Testament... Biblical thought is federal (from the Latin foedus, covenant) from first to last--from God's covenant with Noah establishing the biblical equivalent of what philosophers were later to term Natural Law to the Jews' reaffirmation of the Sinai covenant under the leadership of Ezra and Nehemiah, thereby adopting the Torah as the constitution of their second commonwealth. The covenant motif is central to the biblical world view, the basis of all relationships, the mechanism for defining and allocating authority, and the foundation of the biblical political teaching. ↗

— Daniel J. Elazar

#covenant #federalism #politics #design

I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations. ↗

— James Madison

#constitution #freedom-of-speech #freedom-of-thought #politics #freedom

The difference between the past and the present is that individual freedom and security no longer fall to be protected solely through the D vehicle of common-law maxims and presumptions which may be altered or repealed by statute, but are now protected by entrenched constitutional provisions which neither the Legislature nor the Executive may abridge. It would accordingly be improper for us to hold constitutional a system which, as Sachs J has noted, confers on creditors the power to consign the person of an impecunious debtor to prison at will and without the interposition at the crucial time of a judicial officer. ↗

— Pius Langa

#common-law #constitution-of-south-africa #constitutional-law #credit #debt

How easily men satisfy themselves that the Constitution is exactly what they wish it to be ↗

— Joseph Story

#men

I didn't say 'former president,' I said 'president,' and I have the constitutional rights according to the constitution, including immunity from prosecution. ↗

— Saddam Hussein

#constitution #constitutional #constitutional rights #former #i