Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol III).djvu/435

§ 1569. In the national government the power is equally as important, as in the state governments. The laws and treaties, and even the constitution, of the United States, would become a dead letter without it. Indeed, in a complicated government, like ours, where there is an assemblage of republics, combined under a common head, the necessity of some controlling judicial power, to ascertain and enforce the powers of the Union, is, if possible, still more striking. The laws of the whole would otherwise be in continual danger of being contravened by the laws of the parts.^[1] The national government would be reduced to a servile dependence upon the states; and the same scenes would be again acted over in solemn mockery, which began in the neglect, and ended in the ruin, of the confederation.^[2] Power, without adequate means to enforce it, is like a body in a state of suspended animation. For all practical purposes it is, as if its faculties were extinguished. Even if there were no danger of collision between the laws and powers of the Union, and those of the States, it is utterly impossible, that, without some superintending judiciary establishment, there could be any uniform administration, or interpretation of them. The idea of uniformity of decision by thirteen independent and co-ordinate tribunals(and the number is now advanced to twenty-four) is absolutely visionary, if not absurd. The consequence would necessarily be, that neither the constitution, nor the laws, neither the rights and powers of the Union, nor those of the states, would be the same in any two states. And there would be per-

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1. The Federalist, No. 22; Chisholm v. Georgia, 2 Dall. 410, 474; ante, Vol. I. p. 246, 247; 3 Elliot's Deb. 142.
2. See Cohens v. Virginia, 6 Wheat. R. 384 to 390; id. 402 to 404, 415; Osborne v. Bank of United States, 9 Wheat. R. 818, 819; ante, Vol. I. § 266, 267.