We are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is, and the judiciary is the safeguard of our property and our liberty and our property under the Constitution.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times, and under all circumstances.
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 bedrock of our democracy is the rule of law and that means we have to have an independent judiciary, judges who can make decisions independent of the political winds that are blowing.
But there is a higher law than the Constitution, which regulates our authority over the domain, and devotes it to the same noble purposes.
Judges are the people who have to protect the rights of individuals, have to protect the rights of minorities, have to protect the rights in the Constitution, have to protect the requirement that the executive and the legislature not simply exercise raw power but adhere to standards of reasonableness and constitutionality.
A constitution, in the American sense of the word, is a written instrument by which the fundamental powers of the government are established, limited, and defined, and by which these powers are distributed among several departments, for their more safe and useful exercise, for the benefit of the body politic.
There are checks and balances and broad separation of powers under the Constitution. Each organ of the State, i.e. the legislature, the executive and the judiciary, must have respect for the others and not encroach into each other's domain.
Outside of the Constitution we have no legal authority more than private citizens, and within it we have only so much as that instrument gives us. This broad principle limits all our functions and applies to all subjects.
Our role as judges is to interpret the law.
Our Constitution exists to secure individual freedom, the essential condition of human flourishing. Liberty is not provided by government; liberty preexists government. It's our natural birthright, not a gift from the sovereign. Our founders upended things and divided power to enshrine a promise, not a process.
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