Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1899 Excerpt:...Court of Virgin-ia. Marshall then addressed himself to the discussion of the question, and, as was usually the case when he discussed a constitutional question, he exhausted it. So inexorable was his logic, so convincing his reasoning, that the questioned power passed at once into the category of unquestioned powers, where it has ever sinoe remained. Here, as in other cases, Marshall did not simply announcepa conclusion, but he demonstrated that the decision was right; that the urisdiction attacked not only existed, but was essential to the existence of a supreme organic law for the whole country. The Constitution, you will remember, declares that the Constitution of the United States and the laws and treaties made pursuant to it shall be the supreme law of the land. Marshall showed that unless there is to be a resort to force on every occasion when this supremacy is called in question, the power to restrain, peaceably and by authority of law, every departure from the supreme law must be vested in some court; that if it were not vested in one supreme tribunal, but could be exercised in the last resort by the courts of each State, then the Constitution and the laws and treaties of the United States, intended to apply equally and uniformly to all the people, might receive as many different constructions as there were States, and instead of at uniform we would » have a multiform Constitution, a result obviously incompatible with the existence of one supreme organic law for the whole country. Here then was established, explained and justified one of the mt-st important functions of the Supreme Court, that of final interpreter of the Constitution; and there was thus insured that uniformity of construction essential to the supremacy of the Constitution. Amon...