When a law is in its nature a contract, when absolute rights have vested under that contract, a repeal of the law cannot divest those rights.
John Marshall
When a law is in its nature a ...
Quotes from the same author
To listen well is as powerful a means of communication and influence as to talk well.
John Marshall
The institution of Masonry ought to be abandoned as one capable of much evil, and incapable of producing any good which might not be affected by safe and open means.
John Marshall
I have always believed that national character... depends more on the female part of society than is generally imagined. Precepts from the lips of a beloved mother... sink deep in the heart, and make an impression which is seldom entirely effaced.
John Marshall
The acme of judicial distinction means the ability to look a lawyer straight in the eyes for two hours and not hear a damned word he says.
John Marshall
Certainly all those who have framed written constitutions contemplate them as forming the fundamental and paramount law of the nation, and consequently the theory of every such government must be, that an act of the legislature, repugnant to the constitution, is void.
John Marshall
