For myself, therefore, I desire to declare that the principle that will govern me in the high duty to which my country calls me is a strict adherence to the letter and spirit of the Constitution as it was designed by those who framed it.

None of us takes amending the Constitution lightly. The plain fact is this amendment has been exhaustively studied and it really is time to act.

If one race be inferior to the other socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot put them upon the same plane.

They had no right, as it seems to me, to prosecute me in these Halls; nor have you the right in law or under the Constitution, as I respectfully submit, to take jurisdiction over offenses committed against them.

We current justices read the Constitution in the only way that we can: as 20th-century Americans.

I hope they're going to learn, and as a result of our response, that it isn't going to work. They're not going to change our life, they're not going to have us throw out our Constitution, and they're not going to chase us out of the Middle East.

To me, that means getting back to the point where our Constitution means that you don't tap people's phones and poke into their e-mail and you don't arrest people and keep them hidden for a year and a half without charging them.

We know no document is perfect, but when we amend the Constitution, it would be to expand rights, not to take away rights from decent, loyal Americans. This great Constitution of ours should never be used to make a group of Americans permanent second-class citizens.

More students have a better knowledge of pop culture than of the Constitution.

Each state in the Union is honored in the order of when it ratified the Constitution and became a part of the United States. This September it is Iowa's turn. Iowa became the 29th state to be admitted to the union on December 28, 1846.

I don't think the Constitution is studied almost anywhere, including law schools. In law schools, what they study is what the court said about the Constitution. They study the opinions. They don't study the Constitution itself.

The notion that Congress can change the meaning given a constitutional provision by the Court is subversive of the function of judicial review; and it is not the less so because the Court promises to allow it only when the Constitution is moved to the left.

The right to procreate is not guaranteed, explicitly or implicitly, by the Constitution.

Those who made and endorsed our Constitution knew man's nature, and it is to their ideas, rather than to the temptations of utopia, that we must ask that our judges adhere.

Drafting a constitution is only the first step. The constitution has to be granted legitimacy by open discussion and a fair, representative referendum.