Legislature Quotes - page 6

Mr. MADISON considered the popular election of one branch of the National Legislature as essential to every plan of free Government. (James Madison)
The statute law is the will of the legislature in writing; the common law is nothing else but statutes worn out by time; all our law began by consent of the legislature, and whether it is now law by usage or writing, it is the same thing. View quote
John Eardley Wilmot
In a racially diverse society, it makes sense to phase out state sanction for the battle flag - as South Carolina governor Nikki Haley advocated yesterday, in calling on the state legislature to vote for the removal of the battle flag that has been flying over the grounds of the state capitol... View quote
Victor Davis Hanson
Everyone's effort will be directed toward snatching a scrap of fraternal privilege from the legislature. The suffering classes, although having the greatest claim, will not always have the greatest success. View quote
Frédéric Bastiat
Governor Jan Brewer and the Arizona legislature have created an environment in Arizona where performing is no longer a neutral act. They have created an environment where they can convert the normal commercial interaction between artists and their fans into the means to apply this racist law. View quote
Zack de la Rocha
What I don't like is judges legislating from the bench. And as president of the United States, I will appoint justices who uphold the Constitution and who don't see themselves as a super legislature. View quote
Michele Bachmann
The Alabama Democratic convention [instructed] its delegates to walk out of the national convention if the party refused to adopt a platform pledging a federal slave code for the territories. Other lower-South Democratic organizations followed suit. In February, Jefferson Davis presented the substance of southern demands to the Senate in resolutions affirming that neither Congress nor a territorial legislature could 'impair the constitutional right of any citizen of the United States to take his slave property into the common territories. View quote
Jefferson Davis
Take Kentucky. Kentucky's legislature voted not to secede, and early in the war, Confederate Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston ventured through the western part of the state and found 'no enthusiasm as we imagined and hoped but hostility ... in Kentucky.' Eventually, 90,000 Kentuckians would fight for the United States, while 35,000 fought for the Confederate States. Nevertheless, according to historian Thomas Clark, the state now has 72 Confederate monuments and only two Union ones. View quote
James W. Loewen
It is for the legislature to alter the law if Parliament in its wisdom thinks an alteration desirable. View quote
Edward Macnaghten, Baron Macnaghten
When you assemble from your several counties in the Legislature, were every member to be guided only by the apparent interest of his county, government would be impracticable. There must be a perpetual accomodation and sacrifice of local advantage to general expediency. View quote
Alexander Hamilton
The right of parliament to legislate for us cannot be accounted for upon any reasonable grounds. The constitution of Great Britain is very properly called a limited monarchy, the people having reserved to themselves a share in the legislature, as a check upon the regal authority, to prevent its degenerating into despotism and tyranny. (Alexander Hamilton)
Courts were designed to be an intermediate body between the People and the Legislature, in order, among other things, to keep the latter within the limits assigned to their authority. The interpretation of the laws is the proper and peculiar province of the Courts. A Constitution is, in fact, and must be regarded by the Judges, as a fundamental law. It therefore belongs to them to ascertain its meaning, as well as the meaning of any particular Act proceeding from the Legislative body. If there should happen to be an irreconcilable variance between the two. View quote
Alexander Hamilton
We no longer petition legislature or Congress to give of the right to vote, but appeal to women everywhere to exercise their too long neglected "citizen's right" ... We assert the province of government to be to secure the people in the enjoyment of their unalienable rights. We throw to the winds the old dogma that governments can give rights. View quote
Susan B. Anthony
Here in Nigeria, what makes the news is conflict between the executive and the legislature. View quote
Yemi Osinbajo
Finally, it should also be noted that the very existence of a bicameral legislature is itself another defence of the status quo. View quote
Thomas Flanagan (political scientist)
!-- A motion was made and seconded, that the report of the Committee made on Monday last, be amended, so far as to add the following to the first article therein mentioned, viz.: ' -->And that the said Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of time press, or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms; or to raise standing armies, unless when necessary for the defence of the United States, or of some one or more of them; or to prevent the people from petitioning, in a peaceable and orderly manner, the federal legislature, for a redress of grievances; or to subject the people to unreasonable searches and seizures of their persons, papers or possessions. View quote
Samuel Adams
No one should negotiate their dreams. Dreams must be free to fly high. No government, no legislature, has a right to limit your dreams. You should never agree to surrender your dreams. View quote
Jesse Jackson
In the Legislature of the Union alone are all represented. The Legislature of the Union alone, therefore, can be trusted by the people with the power of controlling measures which concern all, in the confidence that it will not be abused. View quote
John Marshall
In Texas, we have the death penalty and we use it! That's right. You come to Texas and kill somebody, we will kill you back! That's our policy. They're trying to pass a bill right now through the Texas legislature that will speed up the process of execution in heinous crimes where there's more than 3 credible eyewitnesses. That means that if three or more people saw you do what you did, you don't sit on Death Row for 15 years, Jack! You go straight to the front of the line. Other states are trying to abolish the death penalty. My state's putting in the express lane! View quote
Ron White
Marriage has been defined by every legislature that has ever sat in the United States from every State, now 50 States, the same way, but now we have unelected judges altering and changing that fundamental institution. View quote
Jeff Sessions
There is no intrinsic virtue to law and order unless 'law' is equated with justice and 'order' with the discipline of a people satisfied that justice has been done. Law as an instrument of state oppression is a familiar feature of totalitarianism. Without a popularly elected legislature and an independent judiciary to ensure due process, the authorities can enforce as 'law' arbitrary decrees that are in fact flagrant negations of all acceptable norms of justice. There can be no security for citizens in a state where new 'laws' can be made and old ones changed to suit the convenience of the powers that be. (Aung San Suu Kyi)
If we believe in our current penal process, then the penalties imposed by judges and juries should be the only sanctions for one's crime, not the invisible sanctions of the legislature. View quote
Charles B. Rangel
The mystic reverence, the religious allegiance, which are essential to a true monarchy, are imaginative sentiments that no legislature can manufacture in any people. View quote
Walter Bagehot
All [zoos] actually offer to the public in return for the taxes spent upon them is a form of idle and witless amusement, compared to which a visit to a penitentiary, or even to a State legislature in session, is informing, stimulating and ennobling. View quote
H. L. Mencken
Though it would be unfair to blame all on him, there is no escaping the fact that President Barack Obama has been an exceptionally divisive figure. Failing to find formulae for working with a hostile Congress he has tried to circumvent the legislature whenever possible, adding fuel to the fire of division. He leaves behind a deeply divided government. By turning his power base into a coalition of racial, ethnic and religious minorities, Obama has pushed the majority towards radical messages they had shunned for generations. He leaves behind a divided society. Today, even the two main parties, Democrat and Republican, are split with surprising reversals of alliances within each. He leaves behind a divided establishment. View quote
Amir Taheri