Butler Shaffer on constitutions

Formal constitutions were written, presuming to create a state by contract, in the collective name of “We the people.” In the American version, political authority was to be disbursed among three major branches, with the legislative branch to enjoy sovereign power; a proposition that would make it difficult – if not impossible – for an individual to enjoy unchecked authority. Coupled with the illusion that the exercise of power could be restrained by words written on parchment, it was believed that reasonable persons could therefore trust state power. That some of the most repressive actions of the Soviet Union were conducted under a written constitution loosely modeled on the American one, should disabuse anyone of the thought that governmental powers could be restrained by words.

~ Butler Shaffer, "The Myth of the Constitution," LewRockwell.com, April 5, 2017

USSR Constitution Day
1949

William H. Taft on Constitutional checks on majority rule

Constitutions are checks upon the hasty action of the majority. They are the self-imposed restraints of a whole people upon a majority of them to secure sober action and a respect for the rights of the minority.

~ William H. Taft

Horatio Seymour on democracy and the Constitution

The merit of our Constitution is not that it promotes democracy, but checks it.

~ Horatio Seymour

John Adams on civic responsibility

We electors have an important constitutional power placed in our hands; we have a check upon two branches of the legislature...  It becomes necessary to every [citizen] then, to be in some degree a statesman: and to examine and judge for himself... the... political principles and measures.  Let us examine them with a sober... Christian spirit.

~ John Adams

John Adams & His House
1940

Lord Acton on federation and democracy

Of all the checks on democracy, federation has been the most efficacious and the most congenial . . . . . The federal system limits and restrains the sovereign power by dividing it and assigning to Government only certain defined rights. It is the only method of curbing not only the majority but the power of the whole people.

~ Lord Acton