Page:James Bryce American Commonwealth vol 1.djvu/401

CHAP. XXXIII agents' judgment, allowing all that freedom in using one means or another to attain the desired end which is needed to ensure success. This, which would in any case be the common-sense view, is fortified by the language of the Constitution, which authorizes Congress "to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any department or office thereof." The sovereignty of the National government, therefore, "though limited to specified objects, is plenary as to those objects" and supreme in its sphere. Congress, which cannot go one step beyond the circle of action which the Constitution has traced for it, may within that circle choose any means which it deems apt for executing its powers, and is in its choice of means subject to no review by the courts in their function of interpreters, because the people have made their representatives the sole and absolute judges of the mode in which the granted powers shall be employed. This doctrine of implied powers, and the interpretation of the words "necessary and proper," were for many years a theme of bitter and incessant controversy among American lawyers and publicists. The