Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol II).djvu/14

 6 that, parliaments being laid aside, the courts of Westminster Hall made their own laws; or, that the two houses of parliament, with the king at their head, tried and decided causes at their bar. It is evident, in the first place, that the decisions of such a judicature would be so many laws; and, in the second place, that, when the parties and the interests to be affected by the laws were known, the inclinations of the law-makers would inevitably attach on one side or the other; and that where there were neither any fixed rules to regulate their determinations, nor any superior power to control their proceedings, these inclinations would interfere with the integrity of public justice. The consequence of which must be, that the subjects of such a constitution would live either without any constant laws, that is, without any known pre-established rules of adjudication whatever; or under laws made for particular persons, and partaking of the contradictions and iniquity of the motives, to which they owed their origin.

"These dangers, by the division of the legislative and judicial functions, are in this country effectually provided against. Parliament knows not the individuals, upon whom its acts will operate; it has no cases or parties before it; no private designs to serve: consequently, its resolutions will be suggested by the consideration of universal effects and tendencies, which always produce impartial, and commonly advantageous regulations. When laws are made, courts of justice, whatever be the disposition of the judges, must abide by them; for the legislative being necessarily the supreme power of the state, the judicial and every other power is accountable to that: and it cannot be doubted, that the persons, who possess the sovereign authority of government, will be tenacious of the laws, which they themselves prescribe, and sufficiently jealous of the assumption of dispensing and legislative power by any others." Paley's Moral Philosophy, B. 6, ch. 8. § 522. And the Federalist has, with equal point and brevity, remarked, that "the accumulation of all powers legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may be justly pronounced the very definition of tyranny."