"Constitutionality" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on the floor of the Senate that he had voted against the Stetson bill and for the Wright bill on the understanding that a constitutional amendment would be passed setting at rest all question of the constitutionality of the absolute rate. The machine leaders misled Senator Burnett. ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... severally. Hence State sovereignty, and hence his doctrine that in all cases that cannot come properly before the Supreme Court of the United States for decision, each State is free to decide for itself, on which he based the right of nullification, or the State veto of acts of Congress whose constitutionality the State denies. Mr. Calhoun was himself no secessionist, but he laid down the premises from which secession is the logical deduction; and large numbers of young men, among the most open, the most generous, and the most patriotic in the country, ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... development of the existing law providing a Federal supervision of Congressional elections offered an effective method of reforming these abuses.[15] The need of such a law has manifested itself in many parts of the country, and its wholesome restraints and penalties will be useful in all. The constitutionality of such legislation has been affirmed by the Supreme Court. Its probable effectiveness is evidenced by the character of the opposition that is made to it. It has been denounced as if it were a new exercise of Federal power and ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... to test the constitutionality of the Alabama law, carried the case to the Supreme Court of the United States. The constitutionality of the law was called into question on the following grounds: (1) That it violated the prohibition against ...
— History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... Number Three has just been enacted in the Supreme Court of the United States, Justice Field, of California, taking the leading part as the representative of the majority decision against the constitutionality of the iron-clad test-oath, to prevent traitors from practicing before that high tribunal. I understand it takes the ground that, as the law is a living or profession, the oath cannot be insisted upon to take that living away, and that the President's pardon restores all such rights. ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... a Federalist Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, whose constitutionality no Federalist judge ever doubted, but which Jefferson considered as clearly a violation of the fundamental compact, since they tended to drive certain states, as he thought, into "revolution and blood." Under this provocation Jefferson proclaimed that it was both ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... 1838, 1839, and 1841, and such was the unanimous decision, hereafter quoted, of the Chancellor and Circuit Judge of Mississippi, and of the supreme judicial tribunal, the High Court of Errors and Appeals of the State, in two decisions, on this very point, and in favor of the constitutionality of this law. One of these decisions was made in January, 1842, and the other in April, 1853. These decisions were conclusive against the State, and binding upon the Legislature, the Governor, and the people, for the following reasons. The Constitution ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Errors. The case came up on the 22d of July, 1834. The nature of the law was ably discussed by W.W. Ellsworth and Calvin Goddard, who maintained that it was unconstitutional, and by A.T. Judson and C.F. Cleveland, who undertook to prove its constitutionality. The court reserved its decision, which was never given. Finding that there were defects in the information prepared by the attorney for the State, the indictment was quashed. Because of subsequent attempts to destroy the building, Mr. May and Miss Crandall decided ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson
... abolitionists of the North, and those who sympathized with them, to keep slavery out of the Territories, and to prevent the new States then forming from becoming slave States. There is no doubt that these efforts were illegal and unconstitutional; and yet, in the minds of those who made them, constitutionality was not a sufficient excuse for slavery, which, whatever might be its political status, was morally wrong: that is to say, they believed that such a wrong as slavery could not be justified by paper constitutions ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... the appeals of the railroads against the constitutionality of these Granger Laws had gone through the highest state courts to the Supreme Court of the United States. In the spring of 1877 that body handed down a definitive decision in the case of Munn vs. the State of ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... Crockett's coon and begged him not to shoot, for they would come down. The amended bill was passed and became law. But there was an epilogue to this little drama. The corporations proceeded to attack the constitutionality of the law on the ground of the very amendment for which they had so clamorously pleaded. But they failed. The Supreme Court of the United States, after Roosevelt had become President, affirmed ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... were governed and controlled in him by that cold iron thing, his reason, which never forsook him. There was no further appeal possible save to the United States Supreme Court, as Steger pointed out, and there only on the constitutionality of some phase of the decision and his rights as a citizen, of which the Supreme Court of the United States must take cognizance. This was a tedious and expensive thing to do. It was not exactly obvious at the moment on what point he could ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... Federalist, and comparatively little about the Supreme Court. "This is very remarkable," he says, "in view of the subsequent history; for if there is any 'sleeping giant' in the Constitution, it has proved to be the power of the Supreme Court to pass upon the constitutionality of laws. It does not appear that Hamilton or anybody else foresaw that this function of the Court would build upon the written constitution a body ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... The demands for rapid transit had become more and more imperative as the years went by, and it was fair to assume that neither the courts nor the municipal authorities would be overzealous to find a narrow construction of the laws. Incidentally, the constitutionality of the rapid transit legislation, in its fundamental features, had been upheld in the Supreme Court in a decision which was affirmed by the highest court of the State a few weeks after the Board ...
— The New York Subway - Its Construction and Equipment • Anonymous
... Department became a law, by the action of the Legislature, in March, 1865. As the inauguration of the new system would be the downfall of the old, the friends of the latter resolved to resist it. A case was brought before the Court of Appeals, involving the constitutionality of the bill, and the law was sustained. Measures were set on foot to get the new system to work as soon as possible, but, in the meantime, the leaders of the opposition to it endeavored to be revenged, by disbanding the old force, and leaving ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... general Imperial policy; as a Local officer, it was his duty to act in all local matters according to the advice of his Council, whose tenure of office depended on their being in harmony with, and supported by, a majority of the Legislative Assembly. Questions relating to the constitutionality of any particular law were not left altogether to the decision of the Governor. If a Bill containing a provision infringing Imperial rights passed the Legislature, its validity might be decided in the first instance by the ordinary courts of ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... The constitutionality of a law making appropriations in aid of these objects can not be questioned. While the report of the commission submitted and the plans proposed for the river's improvement seem justified as well on scientific principles ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson
... men, representing most of the activities of the village, would avail themselves of the hospitable chairs about the stove and discuss not only local matters but the general conditions of the country, some of them revolving about the constitutionality of various measures which had been proposed and enacted into laws. They nearly all related to slavery, the compromise measures, the introduction of slaves into new territories, the fugitive slave ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... years later, it came before the Supreme Court its constitutionality was upheld only by a five-to-four vote. The change of one vote would have thrown all the affairs of this great Nation back into hopeless chaos. In effect, four Justices ruled that the right under a private contract to exact a pound of flesh was more sacred than the main objectives of the Constitution ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... papers now boldly demanded that the draft should be officially suspended until its constitutionality could be tested by the courts. The State and Municipal authorities of New York appealed to the ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... policy. Mr. Madison came into the Virginia legislature. 1 was then in the Vice-Presidency, and could not leave my station. But your father, Colonel W. C. Nicholas, and myself happening to be together, the engaging the co-operation of Kentucky in an energetic protestation against the constitutionality of those laws, became a subject of consultation. Those gentlemen pressed me strongly to sketch resolutions for that purpose, your father undertaking to introduce them to that legislature, with a solemn assurance, which I strictly ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... won, pressure was brought to bear on me to let up on the Lamson outfit and call off further proceedings. For some time I persistently refused to do so, as I was determined to contest the constitutionality of the law. Finally, however, on condition that Lamson should be thrown out, the management of the company reorganized, its criminal methods abandoned, and all records and trace of the indictment against myself and ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... corporation, passed an act changing the organization of the original provincial charter of the college, and transferring all the rights, privileges, and franchises, from the old charter trustees to new trustees appointed under the act. The constitutionality of the act was contested, and after solemn arguments, it was deliberately held by the supreme court that the provincial charter was a contract within the meaning of the constitution (art. i, sect. 10), ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... involving such important principles and such deep pecuniary interests, I feel that I can not, in justice to the parties interested, too soon present it to the deliberate consideration of the Legislature and the people. Both the constitutionality and the expediency of the law creating this bank are well questioned by a large portion of our fellow-citizens, and it must be admitted by all that it has failed in the great end of establishing a uniform ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson
... defeat Douglas for the United States Senate but he continued to discuss the constitutionality of the restriction of slavery. On more than one instance he limited his remarks to this question, irrespective of the type of his audience or character of the occasion. He persistently reiterated the doctrine that there was no provision in the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... Of the constitutionality of those measures which the Whig Club originally espoused, no man could entertain a doubt. They were the law of England. The manner in which these measures were urged by the Whig Club was equally constitutional. They brought them before Parliament by bill and by motion, supported ...
— The Causes of the Rebellion in Ireland Disclosed • Anonymous
... reconstruction period to stay the hands of the President is too fresh in the minds of the people to be told now. Much of it, no doubt, was unconstitutional; but it was hoped that the laws enacted would serve their purpose before the question of constitutionality could be submitted to the judiciary and a decision obtained. These laws did serve their purpose, and now remain "a dead letter" upon the statute books of the United States, no one taking interest enough in them to give them a ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... extension of the principle to male wage earners is put on two grounds—the constitutional and the economic. On the constitutional argument, only the briefest comment will be attempted; and that without any intention to dogmatize upon a most complicated subject. That is that the test of the constitutionality of these proposals should be the balance of good or harm they promise. The constitution is at bottom but a very wise guide as to what public good and harm consists of. But as the conditions and facts which determine good and harm change, ...
— The Settlement of Wage Disputes • Herbert Feis
... embracing twenty-seven square miles south of the Monongahela River, while in 1906 Allegheny was also annexed; and, as there was litigation to test the validity of the consolidation, the Supreme Court of the United States on December 6, 1907, declared in favor of the constitutionality of the act. ...
— A Short History of Pittsburgh • Samuel Harden Church
... constitution, and who studied the matter most intensely, with every opportunity for information and with minds trained for years in the depths of legal science. But, be it wrong—be it unwise and unconstitutional; there are civil courts to decide upon its constitutionality, and no man has any right to decide for himself that it is unconstitutional, and act upon that decision: if he had such a right, then every man would be his own Lawmaker, and public Constitution and Law would be nothing but a bugbear or a bubble! Be it wrong; there is a ...
— The Religious Duty of Obedience to Law • Ichabod S. Spencer
... administrative law, judges are selected from the nominees of the Higher Council of Justice for eight-year terms; Constitutional Court, guards integrity and supremacy of the constitution, rules on constitutionality of laws, amendments to the constitution, and ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... civil law system; the Constitutional Tribunal reviews the constitutionality of legislation; accepts ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... mean of the last order of Jacobins, but of the first of that name. The faction in the Council of Five Hundred, who, finding no counsel from the public, began to be frightened at appearances, fortified itself against the dread of this Society, by passing a law to dissolve it. The constitutionality of the law was at least doubtful: but the Society, that it might not give the example of exasperating matters already too much inflamed, ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... choice. The Senate therefore stands at present twenty-two in favor, and nine opposed to the bill. The Message of Governor HUNT narrates the events which gave occasion to the Extra Session, and argues in favor of the constitutionality and expediency of the proposed measure for the enlargement of the canals.—— An Address has been issued by 56 of the 112 members of the Convention which framed the Constitution of the State, whose names are appended to that document, in which, after examining ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... regulate commerce. He contended in the debate that the act was a restriction and not a regulation of commerce, and consequently was beyond the power of Congress. The Supreme Court of the United States very soon afterwards sustained the constitutionality ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... spirit was cherished by unlicensed conventions, which, after voting their own constitutionality, and assuming the name of the people, arrayed themselves against the legislature, and detailed at great length the grievances by which they alleged themselves to be oppressed. Its hostility was principally directed against the compensation promised to the officers of the ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... but a great deal of it is genuine. The writer remembers attending a dinner of gray-headed judges and counsellors during the trial of Anna Eliza, alias "Nan," Patterson, where one would have supposed that the lightest subject of conversation would be not less weighty than the constitutionality of an income tax, and finding to his astonishment that the only topic for which they showed any zest was whether "Nan" ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... maintain the authority of the throne; and, while he was ready to abdicate if popular opinion demanded it, he was unable to withstand a factious and revolutionary movement as his father had done, by calling to his support the statesmen who could maintain order when menaced. His form of constitutionality was perfectly adapted to a country where the Conservative forces were supreme and the institutions solid; but in a half-consolidated monarchy, attacked from within and without by dissolvent influences as is Italy at present, he was a cause ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman |
