Roger Brooke Taney
151
until Jefferson's inauguration, from that time on devoted his great powers to the
legislatures were left untrammeled to
establishment of the court as an efi‘icient part of the government. It constantly
intended, our system so far not only has
preservation of their liberties than if work out for good or ill the results
advanced during the thirty-four years
been found workable and satisfactory
of his administration, assisted and sup
but has successfully stood the perils of internecine conflict and the period of
ported by a group of able associates, in the respect and estimation of the country. It is not within the scope of this paper to refer specially to the many notable and earlier decisions by which
nouncement of the doctrine that Con
he may be said to have interpreted the Constitution as a body of organic law, alike adapted for the maintenance of a
gress has no power to pass a statute not within the Constitution. The argu ment of Chief Justice Marshall, while
strong central government as well as recognizing and protecting the autonomy
simple, is conclusive.
of the states.
In the long contest which
reconstruction. In Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, decided in 1803, is found the first an
It is, that the
Constitution must be regarded as setting
Monroe and Jackson, and the ever rising
a limit to the legislative power by the terms employed in the instrument, and the Supreme Court, upon which
forces of democracy, the one formidable
original jurisdiction is conferred. must
weapon in the judicial armory to which
decide conformably to the law, rather than disregard the Constitution, where
Marshall waged with Jefferson, Madison,
the executive, and Congress could inter
pose no effective shield, was the power to declare a federal statute void because not within the sanction of the Consti
tution.
If Judge Dillon's view,2 that there are times of great political upheaval and ex citement in a democracy when the people by operation of the organic law must be protected from themselves until normal conditions are restored, is the counter availing balance giving poise to the governmental machinery, yet in England, "where freedom broadens slowly down from precedent to precedent,” an act of
Parliament is supreme, binding alike the courts as well as the subjects of the realm. If the student of forms of government may sometimes hesitate before saying that the power of
the act of the legislature is in conflict
with its provisions.
It is interesting to
recall that so much of this decision as discussed the constitutional question and announced this principle was en tirely outside of the record and wholly uncalled for. The court had no juris diction whatever, and so said, of Mar
bury’s petition for a writ of mandamus to compel Madison, who was Jefferson's Secretary of State, to issue to him a. com mission as justice of the peace, to which
office he had been appointed in the clos
ing days of President John Adams’ ad ministration. The political diflerences which gave a vivid accentuation to the decision have long since passed,
and irrespective of party afliliations, or that being without jurisdiction this part
a judicial tribunal to thwart the will
of the opinion was wholly irrelevant,
of the electorate as expressed through their chosen legislative representatives
the court has never departed from the
furnishes a greater safeguard for the
principles announced.
If Marshall when he died in the sum mer of
2 Laws and Jurisprudence America, 205, 206.
of
England and
1835 had securely laid this
corner stone of our federal jurispru
