Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol III).djvu/504

prevent a prostration of any of its great departments to the authority of the others; the language can never be unseasonable, either for admonition or instruction, to warn us of the facility, with which public opinion may be persuaded to yield up some of the barriers of the constitution under temporary influences, and to teach us the duty of an unsleeping vigilance to protect that branch, which, though weak in its powers, is yet the guardian of the rights and liberties of the people. "It was supposed," says the learned author,

that there could not be a doubt, that those tribunals, in which justice is to be dispensed, according to the constitution and laws of the confederacy; in which life, liberty, and property are to be decided upon; in which questions might arise as to the constitutional powers of the executive, or the constitutional obligation of an act of the legislature; and in the decision of which the judges might find themselves constrained by duty, and by their oaths, to pronounce against the authority of either, should be stable and permanent; and not dependent upon the will of the executive or legislature, or both, for their existence. That without this degree of permanence, the tenure of office during good behaviour could not secure to that department the necessary firmness to meet unshaken every question, and to decide, as justice and the constitution should dictate, without regard to consequences. These considerations induced an opinion, which, it was presumed, was general, if not universal, that the power vested in congress to erect, from time to time, tribunals inferior to the supreme court, did not authorize them, at pleasure, to demolish them. Being built upon the rock of the constitution, their foundations were supposed to partake of its perma-