A Quote by James Madison

The States then being the parties to the constitutional compact, and in their sovereign capacity, it follows of necessity, that there can be no tribunal above their authority, to decide in the last resort, whether the compact made by them be violated; and consequently that as the parties to it, they must themselves decide in the last resort, such questions as may be of sufficient magnitude to require their interposition.
The error is in the assumption that the General Government is a party to the constitutional compact. The States ... formed the compact, acting as sovereign and independent communities.
The powers of the federal government ... result from the compact to which the states are parties, [and are] limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting that compact.
There is one view of the subject which ought to have its influence on those who espouse doctrines which strike at the authoritative origin and efficacious operation of the Government of the United States. The Government of the U.S. like all Governments free in their principles, rests on compact; a compact, not between the Government & the parties who formed & live under it; but among the parties themselves, and the strongest of Governments are those in which the compacts were most fairly formed and most faithfully executed.
Impeachment is our system's last resort for someone who treats himself or herself as above the law, the most relevant thing is whether this president, by his recent course of action, on top of his violations of the foreign corruption or emoluments clause, this president has shone that he cannot be trusted to remain within the law and our constitution's last resort for situations of that kind is to get the person out of office.
Ground troops... have to be a last resort. I think they should always be a last resort.
The last resort of kings, the cannonball. The last resort of the people, the paving stone.
Last I looked - and I'm not a candidate - but last time I checked reading about the Constitution, the Electoral College has nothing to do with parties, has absolutely nothing to do with parties. It's most states are winners take all.
During holiday parties when people used to ask me what I did for a living, I would tell them I sold resort timeshares. That was an effective conversational nonstarter, until I met someone that actually did sell resort timeshares.
[A]s it must be admitted that the remedy under the Constitution lies where it has been marked out by the Constitution; and that no appeal can be consistently made from that remedy by those who were and still profess to be parties to it, but the appeal to the parties themselves having an authority above the Constitution or to the law of nature & of nature's God.
If violence wasn't your last resort, you failed to resort to enough of it.
When I've sent young men and women into harm's way, I always understand that that is the last resort, not the first resort.
I decide my future. I decide what I want to do. Nobody else. If I decide this will be my last year, maybe it is. If I decide it will be my last contract, I decide that. Nobody else. So I will decide when the moment is there.
[In the case of] dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the states, who are parties thereto, have the right, and are duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil.
Here, in the dread tribunal of last resort, valor contended against valor. Here brave men struggled and died for the right as God gave them to see the right.
The capacity to produce social chaos is the last resort of desperate people.
But, you may ask, if the two departments [i.e., federal and state] should claim each the same subject of power, where is the common umpire to decide ultimately between them? In cases of little importance or urgency, the prudence of both parties will keep them aloof from the questionable ground; but if it can neither be avoided nor compromised, a convention of the States must be called to ascribe the doubtful power to that department which they may think best.
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