The framers of the constitution employed words in their natural sense; and, where they are plain and clear, resort to collateral aids to interpretation is unnecessary, and cannot be indulged in to narrow or enlarge the text; but where there is ambiguity or doubt, or where two views may well be entertained, contemporaneous and subsequent practical construction is entitled to the greatest weight.

Melville Fuller

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To hold that Congress has general police power would be to hold that it may accomplish objects not intrusted to the general government, and to defeat the operation of the 10th Amendment, declaring that 'the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

Melville Fuller
policegovernmentpeople

The power of the state to impose restraints and burdens upon persons and property in conservation and promotion of the public health, good order, and prosperity is a power originally and always belonging to the states, not surrendered to them by the general government, nor directly restrained by the constitution of the United States, and essentially exclusive.

Melville Fuller
united-statesgovernmentorder

The Emancipation Proclamation is predicated upon the idea that the President may so annul the constitutions and laws of sovereign states, overthrow their domestic relations, deprive loyal men of their property, and disloyal as well, without trial or condemnation.

Melville Fuller
lawmenideas
Without continuity, men would become like flies in summer. by Melville Fuller

Without continuity, men would become like flies in summer.

Melville Fuller
continuitysummermen

I have nine children... and one of them is an invalid. Her mother is obliged to take her away in the winter, and when one bird is off the nest, the other has to go on.

Melville Fuller
motherwinterchildren

Nothing can be clearer than that what the Constitution intended to guard against was the exercise by the general government of the power of directly taxing persons and property within any State through a majority made up from the other States.

Melville Fuller
nothingconstitutiongovernmentpower

No convention on God's foot-stool can, or has a right to, run me and make anything but a Democrat out of me.

Melville Fuller
rightrunmegod