No one imagines that a law professing to tax will be permitted to destroy..

No political dreamer was ever wild enough to think of breaking down the lines which separate the States and compounding the American people into one ….

This government is acknowledged by all, to be one of enumerated powers..

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 a….

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 ta….

Courts are the mere instruments of the law, and can will nothing. When they are said to exercise a discretion, it is a mere legal discretion, a discr….

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 . . .….

The particular phraseology of the Constitution of the United States confirms and strengthens the principle, supposed to be essential to all written c….

A legislative act contrary to the Constitution is not law..

In a free government almost all other rights would become worthless if the government possessed power over the private fortune of every citizen..

The constitution is either a superior paramount law, unchangeable by ordinary means, or it is on a level with ordinary legislative acts, alterable wh….

The government of the Union, then, ... is, emphatically, and truly, a government of the people. In form and in substance it emanates from them. Its p….

A constitution is framed for ages to come, and is designed to approach immortality as nearly as human institutions can approach it..

The people made the Constitution, and the people can unmake it. It is the creature of their own will, and lives only by their will..

The power to tax is the power to destroy..

I fear we may live to see another revolution..

To listen well is as powerful a means of communication and influence as to talk well.

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

The law does not expect a man to be prepared to defend every act of his life which may be suddenly and without notice alleged against him..

What is it that makes us trust our judges? Their independence in office and manner of appointment..

The acme of judicial distinction means the ability to look a lawyer straight in the eyes for two hours and not hear a damned word he says..