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.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of the rule of law over individual authority in governance.
John Marshall highlights the principle that a government should be based on established laws rather than the whims of individuals in power. He argues that if laws fail to protect established rights, the government undermines its foundational purpose and integrity as a law-based entity.
In practice
During a lecture on constitutional law, one can use this quote to illustrate the importance of the rule of law.
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.
Why, do you not know, then, that the origin of all human evils, and of baseness, and cowardice, is not death, but rather the fear of death?
Those candle flames were like the lives of men. So fragile. So deadly. Left alone, they lit and warmed. Let run rampant, they would destroy the very things they were meant to illuminate. Embryonic bonfires, each bearing a seed of destruction so potent it could tumble cities and dash kings to their knees.
All that I would like to be is human, having a share_x000D_ in a civilized, articulate and well-adjusted_x000D_ community where the mind is given its due_x000D_ but the body is not distrusted
When any system has for its goal the advancement of the system over the betterment of its individual members, such a system is embedded in slavery.
Man's needs are infinite, and infinitude can be achieved only in the spiritual realm, never in the material.
When you read God's Word, you must constantly be saying to yourself, "It is talking to me, and about me".
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