Judiciary

"A judicial activist is a judge who interprets the Constitution to mean what it would have said if he, instead of the Founding Fathers, had written it."
        --Sen. Sam Ervin

"The germ of destruction of our nation is in the power of the judiciary, an irresponsible body -- working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall render powerless the checks of one branch over the other and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated."
        --Thomas Jefferson

"You seem...to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all Constitutional questions: a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one, which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so. They have, with others, the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps. ...And their power (is) the more dangerous, as they are in office for life and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots."
        --Thomas Jefferson