Federal Law Quotes

#1. Many civil rights came about, not when they were passed into law, but because the federal government did what it should and saw them enforced.

Claire McCaskill

#2. Racial discrimination in public education is unconstitutional ... All provisions of federal, state or local law requiring or permitting such discrimination must yield to this principle.

Earl Warren

#3. significant component of the federal law of tax-exempt organizations is the body of tax law concerning the conduct and taxation of unrelated trade

Anonymous

#4. The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and injure those whom the state, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity.

Anthony Kennedy

#5. No branch of the law is of more importance to the counsellor, the statesman, or the citizen, than a thorough acquaintance with the Constitution and laws of the Federal Government, as they are administered and as they affect the rights of the people.

Samuel Freeman Miller

#6. For taxpayers, however, it's [pay equity] a rip-off. And it has nothing to do with gender. Both men and women taxpayers will pay additional money to both men and women in the civil service. That's why the federal government should scrap its ridiculous pay equity law.

Stephen Harper

#7. Agents who have left the Secret Service to join other federal law enforcement agencies report that training in firearms and counterterrorism tactics in those agencies in many cases far exceeds the quality of what the Secret Service offered.

Ronald Kessler

#8. We are just interested in dealing with the people we're paying every day. We know federal law allows them to vote in a union at anytime, but we think we can resist that by talking to our own people and giving them enough upside.

David Neeleman

#9. We have federal regulations and state laws that prohibit hunting ducks with more than three rounds. And yet it's legal to hunt humans with 15-round, 30-round, even 150-round magazines.

Dianne Feinstein

#10. Even though New York is the safest big city in the nation, there are still far too many illegal guns on our streets. Nearly all of them arrive from out of state - and most are sold by a small group of rogue gun dealers who refuse to obey federal laws.

Michael Bloomberg

#11. We're wild horses. We're going to eat your food, knock down your tent and poop on your shoes. We're protected by federal law, just like Richard Nixon.

Dave Barry

#12. To the extent residency preferences prevent families and senior citizens from purchasing homes because of race, ethnicity or color, the preferences violate federal law and cannot be tolerated.

Loretta Lynch

#13. I'm glad I made the decision, although the practice of law - and particularly serving as a federal judge - was a part of my life that I really enjoyed and treasured and look back on it with fondness.

George J. Mitchell

#14. Federal and state laws (should) be changed to no longer make it a crime to possess marijuana for private use.

Richard M. Nixon

#15. The rules of war for federal court were contained in the 86 rules of federal civil procedure, the rules of the local federal court, and the courtroom rules of the particular federal judge.

Kenneth Eade

#16. While the federal government is required by law to document publicly its wiretapping of phone lines, it is not required to do so with Internet communications.

Rebecca MacKinnon

#17. We need safe communities that are free from methamphetamine and a federal commitment to stand next to state leadership and law enforcement in the fight against this epidemic.

Rick Larsen

#18. I filed a brief as a friend of the court in the U. of Michigan to keep affirmative action at the U. of Michigan, which I attended the law school. And I was one of the original sponsors of making the Martin Luther King birthday a federal holiday.

Dick Gephardt

#19. Frank Johnson was recognized as one of the great federal judges of American history, I suppose. He was a law-and-order judge. He was a classical, I think, conservative. But he believed that civil rights provided in the Constitution applied to everybody.

Jeff Sessions

#20. As a governor, I've signed virtually every kind of pro-life legislation that we can sign under existing federal law, none of which have been harsh or punitive, but I think they've been important to really point out a pro-life culture in Arkansas. That's, for me, a good thing.

Mike Huckabee

#21. A lot of industry groups have said they support a federal law. They don't want to have to deal with 50 different state laws.

William Jackson

#22. It is a sad day for our country when the moral foundation of our law and the acknowledgment of God has to be hidden from public view to appease a federal judge.

Soledad O'Brien

#23. When community action was put into federal law in the early sixties as part of the effort to combat poverty and social injustice, I supported it intellectually.

Barney Frank

#24. It's been federal law for over two centuries that the child of an American born abroad is a citizen - a natural born citizen.

Ted Cruz

#25. That is the one thing in my public career that I regret
my work to secure the enactment of the Federal Reserve Law.

William Jennings Bryan

#26. Timothy Batten is an individual of high integrity and has given many years of service to Georgia and to the United States, .. His common sense dedication to the rule of law, intellect and experience make him a solid candidate for the federal bench in North Georgia.

Saxby Chambliss

#27. [...] equality and nondiscrimination norms should play a greater role in assessments of both federal and subfederal immigration law. As such, we view certain restrictionist laws with greater skepticism than integrationist efforts.

Pratheepan Gulasekaram

#28. Arizona did not make illegal, illegal. It is a crime to enter or remain in the U.S. in violation of federal law. States have had inherent authority to enforce immigration laws when the federal government has failed or refused to do so.

Russell Pearce

#29. This is not to condone torture, which is still prohibited by the Torture Convention and federal criminal law.

John Yoo

#30. Is it just me, or do you also think this is unnatural behavior in a female parent? Isn't there a federal law that says mothers are not allowed to laugh at vulnerable male children when they are required to wear stupid clothing to work?
There should be.

Ann Edwards Cannon

#31. We want to shut down the day laborer site. This day laborer site undermines and violates federal immigration law, and it can't go forward.

Tom Fitton

#32. I think the motive is to establish in federal law the personhood from conception forward and try and alter the Constitution through statute.

Zoe Lofgren

#33. Because federal hate-crime laws criminalize thoughts, they are incompatible with a free society.

Ron Paul

#34. The 10 largest antitrust law firms in the United States have gone into the federal courts charging Monsanto with creating a global conspiracy in violation of the antitrust laws, to control the global market in seeds.

Jeremy Rifkin

#35. In my legal practice, I have seen certain Federal judges controlled or influenced by large corporations ... , by large law firms ... on more than one occasion(, and) ... by special interests ... (some) ought to be thrown right off the bench because they are breaking every code of conduct ...

Orrin Hatch

#36. I came to believe that actually [Louis] Brandeis tended to uphold laws that he liked and strike down those that he didn't, generally strike down centralizing federal agencies in the New Deal, and uphold state economic experimentation.

Jeffrey Rosen

#37. Last year, Congress passed a law that directs the Federal Reserve to set limits on debit card swipe fees that are reasonable and proportional to the cost of processing those transactions. Like most Americans, I had no idea that swipe fees charged to American businesses are the highest in the world.

Peter Welch

#38. Washington has incentivized the militarization of local police precincts by using federal dollars to help municipal governments build what are essentially small armies - where police departments compete to acquire military gear that goes far beyond what most of Americans think of as law enforcement.

Rand Paul

#39. As long as judges tinker with the Constitution to 'do what the people want,' instead of what the document actually commands, politicians who pick and confirm new federal judges will naturally want only those who agree with them politically.

Antonin Scalia

#40. One of the problems with even suggesting that purpose of a Federal law is for law enforcement officers to assist in protecting the public outside their jurisdictions is that it may give them encouragement or even a sense of obligation to do so.

Bobby Scott

#41. A federal appellate circuit looked at what [Barak] Obama was doing and said he can't do it. Immigration law is settled.

Rush Limbaugh

#42. In 'Citizens United v. FEC', the Supreme Court ruled that sections of the federal campaign finance law known as McCain-Feingold imposed unconstitutional restrictions on the First Amendment rights of corporations.

Eric Schneiderman

#43. September 11th does not justify ignoring the Constitution by creating broad new federal police powers. The rule of law is worthless if we ignore it whenever crises occur.

Ron Paul

#44. All provisions of federal, state or local law requiring or permitting discrimination in public education must yield.

Earl Warren

#45. The powers of government exercised locally derive from a federal law authorizing government by consent in local affairs only, unless those affairs are otherwise governed by federal law.

Dick Thornburgh

#46. Well, there are certain pockets of improvement. The one that I think is most important is that state and local law enforcement levels have started to do a lot more educative efforts within their organizations to understand the kind of threat we're facing. They've given up on the federal level.

Michael Scheuer

#47. Criminal conduct by police officers, federal agents, and their confederates cannot be tolerated and will be met with the full force of the law.

Loretta Lynch

#48. This is what Christianity is. We believe the Old Testament, but ours is more like Federal Express. You have to obey laws.

Ann Coulter

#49. You will read in the newspaper more often about federal courts, but the law that affects people, the trials that affect human beings are by and large in the state courts.

Stephen Breyer

#50. I contribute to public candidate campaigns, and there's a federal limit on how much you can contribute to each individual candidate. I obey the law in that regard, and I feel like I'm doing it properly.

David H. Koch

#51. That's not the federal law. What you're confusing is law with the opinion of a justice, what one lone federal judge says is not law.

Roy Moore

#52. The federal government should not be an accessory to the unconstitutional actions of the Arizona state government. By continuing to work with Arizona police departments operating under SB 1070, the Department is implicitly condoning the shameful tactics authorized by the new law.

Lucille Roybal-Allard

#53. We need to get rid of the Federal Elections Commission. It's a joke. It doesn't enforce the law.

Russ Feingold

#54. Under the law, the government, whether it's state, local or federal, cannot give the Catholic Church or any religious institution money directly.

Ed Rendell

#55. Arizona's law makes what is already a federal offense - being in the country illegally - a state offense. Some critics seem not to understand Arizona's right to assert concurrent jurisdiction.

George Will

#56. We must continue to work hard on the federal level, to make sure that our local law enforcement and communities have the tools and resources they need to fight this war against methamphetamine, and keep our kids safe.

Mark Kennedy

#57. Under the Constitution, federal law trumps both state and city law. But antitrust law allows states some exceptional leeway to adopt anticompetitive business regulations, out of respect for states' rights to regulate business. This federal respect for states' rights does not extend to cities.

Marvin Ammori

#58. I think that one of the motivating factors was in my last year of law school: we had a competition, and I won the competition; it was judged by several of the federal judges at the time. I got a tremendous amount of encouragement to pursue litigation from them at the time.

Robert Shapiro

#59. Where the federal government and the taxpayer has had funds misused, we need to use the full extent of the law to get those funds back for the taxpayer.

Sylvia Mathews Burwell

#60. It is the policy of the United States not to engage in torture, and there are federal criminal laws that prohibit torture.

John Yoo

#61. When it comes to federal elections law, Tom DeLay and his special-interest friends live by one set of rules, and everyone else lives by a very different set.

Rahm Emanuel

#62. Internal self-government under a local constitution was authorized by Congress and approved by the residents in 1952, but federal law is supreme in Puerto Rico and residents do not have voting representation in the Congress.

Dick Thornburgh

#63. Unless you live in Indonesia, there should be several malls within five miles of your home. It makes no difference whatsoever which one you go to: Under federal law, all malls in the United States must have the same 42 chain stores.

Dave Barry

#64. There is no right by the federal or state constitution to manual recounts. There is no law that says that you must count dimpled ballots, constitutional or otherwise.

Bill Vaughan

#65. There is no one in the United States over the age of 18 who cannot be indicted for some federal crime. That is not an exaggeration.

John Baker

#66. Once a federal law or policy is in place it is more difficult to kill than a vampire.

Cal Thomas

#67. The American people don't trust the Federal Government to enforce our immigration laws, and we will not be able to do anything on immigration until we first prove to the American people that illegal immigration is under control. And we can do that. We know what it takes to do that.

Marco Rubio

#68. Federal laws, including those that made so many people immigrate without documents, gutted the enforcement power of the Department of Labor and created a lower minimum wage for tipped workers than for everybody else, reinforcing the industry's

Rinku Sen

#69. A corollary is that, when laws are out of touch with the people, those laws can and should be changed - from the most simple local regulations to the highest law of the land, our federal Constitution.

Adrian Cronauer

#70. Sometimes local, state and federal laws so clearly run afoul of the Constitution that the court must step in and strike them down. In most cases, the court performs this admirably and with great restraint.

Mike DeWine

#71. What the USA Freedom Act did is it did two things. Number one, it ended the federal government's bulk collection of phone metadata of millions of law-abiding citizens.

Ted Cruz

#72. Working-class Americans have waited too long, close to a decade in fact, for an increase in the minimum wage. This has been the second longest period without a pay raise since the Federal minimum wage law was first enacted in 1938.

Bill Pascrell

#73. Internet pharmacies return to consumers the choice promised by supporters of the 1938 Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. That law established federal requirements for drug safety and labeling but exempted prescription medicines from the labeling rules.

Virginia Postrel

#74. The function of the prosecutor under the federal Constitution is not to tack as many skins of victims as possible against the wall. His function is to vindicate the rights of the people as expressed in the laws and give those accused of crime a fair trial.

William O. Douglas

#75. It (marijuana) will still be legal under federal law.

Dianne Feinstein

#76. In framing a system which we wish to last for ages, we shd. not lose sight of the changes which ages will produce. [James Madison in the U.S. Constitutional Convention, June 26, 1787. The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, ed. Max Farrand (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), 1:422.]

James Madison

#77. Before I had decided to get into politics, I was laying the groundwork to have a career in the law, but that was really to lay the foundation to teach, either at the college level or law school level after my federal clerkships.

Stephanie Herseth

#78. If you have a federal government that's not enforcing the law and does not preserve the integrity of its own borders, then naturally, states are going to take matters into their own hands.

Pat Toomey

#79. Because the union of a man and woman deserves an honored place in our society, I support the protection of marriage against activist judges. And I will continue to appoint federal judges who know the difference between personal opinion and the strict interpretation of the law.

George W. Bush

#80. As a federal agent, I want you to know I'm disgusted by your lack of respect for the law."
"But you're impressed too," Henry said without turning around. "You're disguspressed.

Lisa Henry

#81. Narrow scope of judicial power was the reason that people accepted the idea that the federal courts could have the power of judicial review; that is, the ability to decide whether a challenged law comports with the Constitution.

Sam Brownback

#82. One of the specific powers and responsibilities of the federal government is to secure the borders. Property can be taken with due process of law and just compensation.

Ted Cruz

#83. Federal law prohibits anyone convicted of a felony from owning a gun. Seems like kind of a good idea, no?

Timothy Noah

#84. Specifically, the reservation of sovereignty to the people of the states in matters not governed by federal law is constitutionally defined and permanently enshrined in the 10th Amendment.

Dick Thornburgh

#85. I would absolutely never use the federal government to enforce the law of using marijuana

Ron Paul

#86. There certainly is a lot of political pressure for states to adopt the new federal tax codes. But there is no law that requires them to do so.

John Barry

#87. The Federal Reserve Act as it stands seems to me to open the way to a vast inflation of the currency. I do not like to think that any law can be passed that will make it possible to submerge the gold standard in a flood of irredeemable paper currency.

Henry Cabot Lodge

#88. Even if it takes changing the law, the president should honor the commitment the federal government made to those people and let them keep what they got.

William J. Clinton

#89. Today it's something about hallucinogenic tea, but tomorrow it could be something that Roman Catholics or Southern Baptists or a number of groups need some accommodation in relation to a federal law.

Charles Haynes

#90. However, the sovereignty of the states is constitutionally defined and recognized, while the powers of the local government in Puerto Rico are defined by, and subject to alteration under, federal statutory law.

Dick Thornburgh

#91. If it cannot be argued that a city has breached a federal or state environmental law, then surely it's committed some form of discrimination. If discrimination cannot be plausibly alleged, well, federal and state constitutions are full of words and promises that might have been violated.

Anonymous

#92. Delaware is the only state east of the Rockies that is allowed under federal law to offer sports betting.

Jack Markell

#93. I do see women voters shifting to the Republican Party and doing so significantly. And the issue that's doing this is the fear the federal government will prevail in making the Affordable Health Care Act permanent law and how that will hurt small businesses.

Cathy McMorris Rodgers

#94. Foreign nationals entering the United States illegally who are taken into custody by the Border Protection Corps or by State or local law enforcement authorities must be promptly delivered to a federal law enforcement authority.

John Culberson

#95. We need to protect the privacy rights of all Americans, and that means stopping the federal government from spying on the cellphones and emails of law-abiding citizens.

Ted Cruz

#96. But they don't use law-they use law for their interests. They don't go by law, international, federal, local-nothing! They go by whatever is expedient to protect the interests that are at stake.

Malcolm X