Perhaps the most famous observation in judicial history, dealing with the Supreme Court’s role in shaping our fundamental law, came from John Marshall in M’Culloch v. Maryland. When it comes to defining the powers of state and federal governments, said the venerable Virginian, “we must never forget that it is a constitution we are expounding.”
And perhaps the second most famous observation came almost ninety years later from Charles Evans Hughes in a speech at Elmira, N.Y. “We are under a Constitution,” said the famed New Yorker, “but the Constitution is what the judges say it is.”
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