Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 8.djvu/262

246 246 HARVARD LAW REVIEW. lowers down to the eighteenth century. Blackstone, however, while in one place he makes a nominal concession to the " law of nature," uses quite other language when he comes to the practical side of English institutions. He denies in particular what he has seemed to admit in general; he will hear nothing of any human authority being empowered to control the Parliament of Great Britain, and explains away the sayings of his predecessors as mean- ing only that Acts of Parliament are to be construed in a reason- able sense if possible. It is worth while to compare the passages. " It [the law of nature] is binding over all the globe, in all countries, and at all times : no human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this." ^ "Acts of Parliament that are impossible to be performed are of no validity ; and if there arise out of them collaterally any absurd conse- quences, manifestly contradictory to common reason, they are, with re- gard to those collateral consequences, void. I lay down the rule with these restrictions ; though I know it is generally laid down more largely, that Acts of Parliament contrary to reason are void. But if the Parlia- ment will positively enact a thing to be done which is unreasonable, I know of no power in the ordinary forms of the constitution that is vested with authority to control it : and the examples usually alleged in support of this sense of the rule do none of them prove that where the main object of a statute is unreasonable the judges are at liberty to reject it ; for that were to set the judicial power above that of the legislature, which would be subversive of all government." ^ "True it is that what the Parliament doth, no authority upon earth can undo." ^ No case is known, in fact, in which an English court of justice has openly taken on itself to overrule or disregard the plain mean- ing of an Act of Parliament. The example given for illustration's sake is that an Act making a man judge in his own cause would be void. Thus Hold said : — " If an Act of Parliament should ordain that the same person should be party and judge, or, which is the same thing, judge in his own cause, it would be a void Act of Parliament ; for it is impossible that one should be judge and party, for the judge is to determine between party and party, or between the government and the party ; and an Act of Parlia- ment can do no wrong, though it may do several things that look pretty odd."* 1 Comm. i. 41. ' Ibid. i. 161. 2 Ibid. i. 91. 4 City of London v. Wood, 12 Mod. 687.