The Constitution is a higher law than the Government, and the People are keepers of the Constitution. There is a great quote floating around all over the internet that says "the Declaration is the promise, the Constitution, its fulfillment" attributed to “a Great Chief Justice” in so many writings yet not a single one that I can find actually says WHO that Chief Justice is. I have heard this line since I was young, and I believe it to be true. I suspect it may have been Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall, but as of yet I have no proof, only suspicions. I may be way off base, so if you know for sure and have references who originated that statement, I want to know!
It is Marshall that raised the status of the Supreme Court to that of a coequal branch of the US government, and he loved the Constitution and the Declaration that spawned it. He attended the convention where Virginia debated whether to ratify the Constitution, arguing strongly for its ratification as a replacement for the Articles of Confederation that had proved to be inadequate to govern the new nation, a very strong Constitutionalist.
Anthony M. Kennedy, in a speech “The Constitution and Its Promise”, stated this immortal truth: “The heritage of freedom is fragile and must be transmitted from one generation to the next ….. The heritage of our freedom is, of course, closely tied to the Constitution of the United States. The heritage of liberty is bound up with the Constitution of the United States.
Americans talk always about the Constitution, and there is a reason for that. The Constitution gives us our identity. The Constitution gives us our self-identity, our self-authentication, our self-esteem, defines our purpose, defines our mission, defines who we are as a people. We come from many ethnicities, nationalities, religions, and yet we are bound together as one people because of our allegiance to and our respect and reverence for the Constitution.”
Or at least it used to give us our identity; or perhaps better stated, should represent our identity as a nation rather than how so many seem to view it now.
“It’s hard to find superlatives for the work that the Framers did in Philadelphia in 1787.”
“The Single Most Wonderful Work.”
On the First Amendment, Justice Kennedy stated “The structural components of the federal Constitution work quite well with the Bill of Rights. The First Amendment, for example, in a way is structural. You cannot have the government work unless you have free speech, so it is structural in that sense. But it is also a substantive right. It is a right inherent in human personality, in human dignity, that you have the right of free expression and free worship...... there are many people who think—and in my view, rightly so—that there are other things in the world that are more important than politics: arts, culture, religion, science, philosophy, sports; whether the umpire got it right last week; whether or not the nature of dark matter is going to be first discovered by microphysicists rather than astrophysicists. This is all part of the speech and thought and belief protected by the First Amendment. We ought not think of it just in political terms..... Speech is what allows you to define your persona, your personality. Your speech and your thought, your beliefs, are who you are, and this is an essential human right.”
Well stated sir.
“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s Godentitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. – That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, – That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”