John Marshall

The particular phraseology of the Constitution of the United States confirms and strengthens the principle, supposed to be essential to all written constitutions, that a law repugnant to the Constitution is void; and that courts, as well as other departments, are bound by that instrument.

A corporation is an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law.

If the agency of the mother in forming the character of her children is, in truth, so considerable, as I think it - if she does so much toward making her son what she would wish him to be - how essential is it that she should be fitted for the beneficial performance of these important duties.

The constitution controls any legislative act repugnant to it.

The constitution is either a superior paramount law, unchangeable by ordinary means, or it is on a level with ordinary legislative acts, alterable when the legislature shall please to alter it. It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is. This is the very essence of judicial duty.

The federal government is acknowledged by all to be one of enumerated powers. The principle, that it can exercise only the powers granted to it . . . is now universally admitted.

The government of the United States has been emphatically termed a government of laws, and not of men. It will certainly cease to deserve this high appellation, if the laws furnish no remedy for the violation of a vested legal right.

Certainly all those who have framed written constitutions contemplate them as forming the fundamental and paramount law of the nation, and consequently the theory of every such government must be, that an act of the legislature, repugnant to the constitution, is void.

Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos.

I have always believed that national character... depends more on the female part of society than is generally imagined. Precepts from the lips of a beloved mother... sink deep in the heart, and make an impression which is seldom entirely effaced.

When a law is in its nature a contract, when absolute rights have vested under that contract, a repeal of the law cannot divest those rights.

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

A legislative act contrary to the Constitution is not law.

The power to tax involves the power to destroy;...the power to destroy may defeat and render useless the power to create.

An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation.