Judicial Review Quotes

We will submit legislation to the United States Senate which will...authorize the Congress to undertake judicial review of those signing statements with the view to having the president's acts declared unconstitutional.

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.

It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is...If two laws conflict with each other, the courts must decide on the operation of each...This is of the very essence of judicial duty.

It is emphatically the province and duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is.

The constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruption's of time and party, its members would become despots.

Judicial review has been a part of our democracy in this constitutional government for over 200 years.

Popularity makes no law invulnerable to invalidation. Americans accept judicial supervision of their democracy - judicial review of popular but possibly unconstitutional statutes - because they know that if the Constitution is truly to constitute the nation, it must trump some majority preferences.

The Constitution is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please.

The notion that Congress can change the meaning given a constitutional provision by the Court is subversive of the function of judicial review; and it is not the less so because the Court promises to allow it only when the Constitution is moved to the left.

She [Justice sandra Day O'Connor] rejected the [George] Bush administration's claim that it could indefinitely detain a United States citizen. She upheld the fundamental principle of judicial review over the exercise of government power.

[T]he opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves, in their, own sphere of action, but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch.

When justices seize authority from the other branches of the federal government, as well as state and local governments, under the rubric of judicial review, that’s tyranny.

As an exercise of raw judicial power, the Court perhaps has authority to do what it does today; but, in my view, its judgment is an improvident and extravagant exercise of the power of judicial review that the Constitution extends to this Court.

To consider judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions is a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.

Not surprisingly, the federal judiciary nearly always rules in favor of the federal government. Judicial review, contrary to the assurances of its advocates, has hardly restrained Congress at all. Instead it has progressively stripped the states of their traditional powers, while allowing federal power to grow unchecked.

All respect for the office of the presidency aside, I assumed that the obvious and unadulterated decline of freedom and constitutional sovereignty, not to mention the efforts to curb the power of judicial review, spoke for itself.

If people around the world knew how well people at Guantanamo Bay are treating prisoners, they would not fall prey to the accusations that some in our Chamber are making. They are all receiving judicial review.

American citizens have been killed abroad by drones with no due process, no accountability, no judicial review.

Narrow scope of judicial power was the reason that people accepted the idea that the federal courts could have the power of judicial review; that is, the ability to decide whether a challenged law comports with the Constitution.

It is especially imperative for Congress to exercise careful judgment in this area, because of the difficulty under existing laws, in obtaining judicial review of Postal Service abuses. ...We strongly oppose the legislation's infringement of rights guaranteed under the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution.