Dr. Powers

"It is, emphatically, the province and duty of the judicial department, to say what the law is. Those who apply the rule to particular cases, must of necessity expound and interpret the rule."

Marbury v. Madison, 1803

"A constitution, to contain an accurate detail of all the subdivisions of which its great powers will admit, and of all the means by which they may be carried into execution, would partake of the prolixity of a legal code, and could scarcely be embraced by the human mind. It would, probably, never be understood by the public. Its nature, therefore, requires that only its great outlines should be marked, its important objects designated, and the minor ingredients which compose those objects, be deduced from the nature of the objects themselves. … We must never forget that it is a constitution we are expounding."

McCulloch v. Maryland, 1819.

"Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, which are not prohibited, but consist with the letter and spirit of the constitution, are constitutional"

McCulloch v. Maryland, 1819

"In discussing this question, the counsel for the State of Maryland have deemed it of some importance, in the construction of the Constitution, to consider that instrument not as emanating from the people but as the act of sovereign and independent sates. The powers of the general government, it has been said, are delegated by the states, who alone are truly sovereign; and must be exercised in subordination to the states, who alone possess supreme dominion. It would be difficult to sustain this proposition."

McCulloch v. Maryland, 1819

"The government proceeds directly from the people; is ordained and established in the name of the people; and is declared to be ordained in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, and secure the blessings of liberty to themselves and their posterity."

McCulloch v. Maryland, 1819

"The people made the constitution, and the people can unmake it. It is the creature of their will, and lives only by their will. But this supreme and irresistible power to make or to unmake resides only in the whole body of the people; not in any subdivision of them. The attempt of any of the parts to exercise it is usurpation, and ought to be repelled by those to whom the people have delegated their power of repelling it."

Cohens v. Virginia, 1821

"America has chosen to be, in many respects, and to many purposes, a nation; and for all these purposes her government is complete, and to all these objects, it is competent. The people have declared , that in the exercise of all powers given for these objects, it is supreme. It can, then, in effecting these objects, legitimately control all individuals or governments within the American territory. The constitution and laws of a State, so far as they are repugnant to the constitution and laws of the United States, are absolutely void. These States are constituent parts of the United States. They are members of one great empire -- for some purposes sovereign, for some purposes subordinate."

Cohens v. Virginia, 1821

"The government of the Union, though limited in its powers, is supreme within its sphere of action."

McCulloch v. Maryland, 1819

"Powerful and ingenious minds, taking as postulates that the powers expressly granted to the government of the Union, are to be contracted by construction into the narrowest possible compass, and that the original powers of the States are to be retained, if any possible construction will retain them, may, by a course of well-digested but refined and metaphysical reasoning founded on these premises, explain away the constitution of our country, and leave it a magnificent structure, indeed to look at, but totally unfit for use."

Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824