The Supreme Court and its Slanderers
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good men who do not know better, and the other two departments of govern ment, that their word and not the who honestly misjudge the causes of people's "is final and inviolate," that existing distress. Without pointing out they are an oligarchy, that they are the honest ones or the dishonest ones, steeped in outworn philosophy, that the truth of history certainly demands they, by their rulings, have favored that these serious assertions be examined "the interests," entrenched privilege into, and especially when they are made by Senators and Representatives in the and wealth, thus blocking all progres sive legislation of recent years, that they, Halls of Congress, by men once high in the grim-visaged, wigged and gowned the councils of one of the great parties monsters and vampires, heartless and of our nation, by editors and magazine The limits all of whom of thisought articleto preclude know better. the conscienceless, are sapping the life blood writers, of the American people. They also assert that the Supreme Court of the discussion of any of these assertions, United States, the arch-conspirator of except the false charge upon which all all against human freedom, is the humble are primarily founded, and that is that camel, the point of whose nose was there was no precedent in the civilized admitted through favor and kindness, world prior to 1789, "for the review of and that later this same camel, by the acts of a legislative assembly by any judicial body," and that it was not stealth and noiseless advances, has be come owner and possessor of the entire known to the framers or to the people premises; that the nine men composing at the time of the adoption of the Con that Supreme Court are able to annul stitution, that such power was expressly the will of the President, the Congress given to the courts. The only trouble and a hundred millions of people, and with these assertions is that they are that that court never had the lawful untrue. The Constitution of the United power to declare a legislative act void, States was framed at Philadelphia, in and that prior to the decision of Mar- the summer of 1787. Did the framers bury v. Madison, in 1803, there was no have any precedents to guide them in precedent in the civilized world for lodging the above judicial power in the the exercise of such a power by any national courts? A brief review of the judicial body. If these groundless subject will convince any unbiased mind assertions were made only by uninformed that they had numerous such precedents. and reckless agitators, it would not Many of the framers were students and be worth while to give them serious men of learning, well versed in the his discussion, because every reasonably tory of all governments, both ancient well-informed citizen of the United and modern. It is therefore fair to say that this judicial power was well known States knows that these bald unsup ported assertions are mere political to them. This power of the courts, claptrap intended to deceive and mis which is the power of the people speak lead the ignorant and the dissatisfied, ing through the courts, to declare legis and are made to further the political lative acts void, which acts are not the fortunes of demagogues. But are such people's acts, but the acts of their baseless assertions made only by that agents, is a most ancient power. It class of agitators? Unfortunately they sprang into life with the dawn of civili are not. They are made by many bad zation. It has existed from the beginning men who know better, and many in some form in many kinds of govern
