Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol II).djvu/19

 CH. VII.] executive and legislative in many respects, either branch may require the advice of the judges, upon solemn questions of law referred to them. The same general division, with the same occasional mixture, may be found in the constitutions of other states. And in some of them the deviations from the strict theory are quite remarkable. Thus, until the late revision, the constitution of New-York constituted the governor, the chancellor, and the judges of the Supreme Court, or any two of them with the governor, a council of revision, which possessed a qualified negative upon all laws passed by the senate and house of representatives. And, now, the chancellor and the judges of the Supreme Court of that state constitute, with the senate, a court of impeachment, and for the correction of errors. In New-Jersey the governor is appointed by the legislature, and is the chancellor and ordinary, or surrogate, a member of the Supreme Court of Appeals, and president, with a casting vote, of one of the branches of the legislature. In Virginia the great mass of the appointing power is vested in the legislature. Indeed, there is not a single constitution of any state in the Union, which does not practically embrace some acknowledgment of the maxim, and at the same time some admixture of powders constituting an exception to it.

§ 527. It would not, perhaps, be thought important to have dwelt on this subject, if originally it had not been made a special objection to the constitution of the United States, that though it professed to be founded upon a division of the legislative, executive, and judicial departments, yet it was really chargeable with a departure from the doctrine by accumulating in some