The Constitution was about a limitation on power.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
The whole frame of the Federal Constitution proves that the government which it creates was intended to be one of limited and specified powers.
Well, I think, by definition, all power has limits.
The whole basis of the Constitution was a restriction of power, and the whole basis of the federalist system was that there was not one sovereign centralized power from which all authority flows.
A Constitution should be short and obscure.
There is a higher law than the Constitution.
In the Constitution of the American Republic there was a deliberate and very extensive and emphatic division of governmental power for the very purpose of preventing unbridled majority rule.
But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain - that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.
It is not questioned that the Federal Government is one of limited powers. Its powers are such, and such only, as are expressly granted in the Constitution or are properly incident to the expressly granted powers and necessary to their execution.
The ultimate touchstone of constitutionality is the Constitution itself and not what we have said about it.
Power's not what the Constitution was about.