A Quote by Sandra Day O'Connor
I sort of thought the framers of the Constitution were talking about the rights of individuals, not corporate entities.
Related Quotes
Neither James Madison, for whom this lecture is named, nor any of the other Framers of the Constitution, were oblivious, careless, or otherwise unaware of the words they chose for the document and its Bill of Rights.
Its minority rule and majority limited rights. In fact it's set up that way. If you read the framers of the constitution, including James Madison, he was pretty clear about it.
Republicans, supposed defenders of limited government, actually are enablers of an unlimited presidency. Their belief in strict construction of the Constitution evaporates, and they become, in behavior if not in thought, adherents of the woolly idea of a 'living Constitution.' They endorse, by their passivity, the idea that new threats justify ignoring the Framers' text and logic about shared responsibility for war-making.
The very inclusion of the right to keep and bear arms in the Bill of Rights shows that the framers of the Constitution considered it an individual right.
The Framers of the Constitution expected the presidency to be occupied by special individuals, selfless people of the highest character and ability. They intended the Electoral College to be a truly deliberative body, not the largely ceremonial institution it has become today.
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.
We were not talking about the average white person: we was talking about the corporate money rich and the racist jive politicians and the lackeys, as we used to call them, for the government who perpetuate all this exploitation and racism.
The Constitution does not protect the sovereignty of States for the benefit of the States or state governments as abstract political entities, or even for the benefit of the public officials governing the States. To the contrary, the Constitution divides authority between federal and state governments for the protection of individuals.
The Framers of the Bill of Rights did not purport to 'create' rights. Rather, they designed the Bill of Rights to prohibit our Government from infringing rights and liberties presumed to be preexisting.
The framers of the Constitution realized that . . . there needed to be some guardian of the sober second thought, and so they created the Senate to fulfill that high and vitally important duty.
The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights were all written by affluent white males, but to discuss them in any meaningful way, you have to bring in the roles of African Americans - the enslaved blacks - and the roles of women, who were scarcely acknowledged by those documents. You have to discuss why slavery wasn't outlawed by the Constitution, why women weren't given the votes. The Bill of Rights isn't about dead white males anymore, and it's not just about live white males either; it's about every minority group that exists.
[The] government has room to scale back individual rights during wartime without violating the Constitution. The Constitution just sets minimums. Most of the rights that you enjoy go way beyond what the Constitution requires.
The framers of the Constitution were so clear in the federalist papers and elsewhere that they felt an independent judiciary was critical to the success of the nation.
I was a young feminist in the '70s. Feminism saved my life. It gave me a life. But I saw how so much of what people were saying was not matching up with what they were doing. For example, we were talking about sister solidarity, and women were putting each other down. We were talking about standing up for our rights, and women weren't leaving abusive relationships with men. There were just so many disconnects.
Americans - not just starting thirty years ago but going back to the beginning, when we were rebelling against King George - we've always been of two minds about the government, which is why the framers wrote the Constitution the way they did.
I don't see a direct conflict between the rights of individuals and the rights of communities, because I don't perceive of communities as having rights in a way that individuals do. Communities certainly have interests, but they don't exactly have rights.
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