Quoteworthy

"(W)hen a strict interpretation of the Constitution ... is abandoned, and the theoretical opinions of individuals are allowed to control its meaning, we have no longer a Constitution; we are under the government of individual men, who for the time being have power to declare what the Constitution is, according to their own views of what it ought to mean."

— Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Curtiss, March 6, 1857, dissenting from the Dred Scott ruling that slaves were property