[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 9]
[Senate]
[Page 13644]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            CONSTITUTION DAY

  Mr. HATCH. Madam President, especially in times of crisis but also in 
times of ease, Americans have reason to reflect on the foundation of 
the life we enjoy as a Nation. More than the citizens of any other 
country, when Americans think of their collective lives or their 
individual liberties, we think of a document. On this day, 226 years 
ago, a group of America's Founders signed the Constitution of the 
United States.
  In May of 1787, 55 of the 70 delegates chosen by 12 of the 13 States 
gathered in the Pennsylvania Statehouse, where both the Articles of 
Confederation and the Declaration of Independence had been signed. Just 
115 days later, 39 of those delegates signed the Constitution and 
within 18 months it had been ratified and was the supreme law of the 
land.
  The Constitution is special both for whose it is and for what it 
does. The Constitution's first three words identify its ownership when 
it says ``we the people.'' The Constitution belongs to the people. The 
Constitution is also special for what it does. It both empowers and 
limits government. The Constitution gives powers to government by 
delegating enumerated powers to the Federal Government and reserving 
the others to the States and the people. And the Constitution limits 
those powers in multiple ways, including the very fact of being written 
down. As the Supreme Court put it in Marbury v. Madison, the 
Constitution was written so that the limits on government would be 
neither mistaken nor forgotten.
  Put these two principles together and we see that the Constitution is 
the primary tool for the people to control their government. That is 
both the genius of its design and the source of its vitality. The 
Constitution lives because of whose it is and what it does. Departing 
from that design kills the Constitution.
  President George Washington said in his farewell address that the 
very basis of our political system is the people's right to control 
their Constitution. Take away that right, undermine that control, 
strikes at the heart of the system of government that has given us 
liberty unparalleled in human history. That is why, for example, we 
contend over the appointment of Federal judges, many of whom appear 
willing or even determined to control the Constitution rather than to 
be controlled by it.
  In times of crisis, we often look to the powers of government and in 
times of ease, we may emphasize more the limits on those powers. But 
let us never mistake or forget whose the Constitution is and what it 
does so that it may continue to fulfill the purposes stated in its 
preamble: to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure 
domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the 
general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and 
our posterity.

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