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THE GREEN BAG

transformed into state constitutions, the Judicial Committee was superseded by the Supreme Courts of the several states. Finally, when the new system of limita tions on legislative power, thus born in the states, widened into national importance through its application to the legislative power vested in the unique Federal Repub lic created by the Constitution of 1787, the inevitable outcome was the Supreme Court of the United States, the only court in his tory ever endowed with the right to pass on the validity of a national law. When by the unaided force of irresistible judicial logic, Marshall lifted that right into,the highest possible sphere, he wrought a revo lution in the jurisprudence of the world by giving to judge-made law its widest possible expansion, an expansion for which no pre cedent could be found in the history of the past. And yet no jurist ever recognized more religiously than Marshall the differ ence that divides a system of organic law from a mere code of municipal law. In a leading case he said: "A constitution to contain an accurate detail of all the sub divisions of which its great powers will admit, and of all the means by which they may be carried into execution, would par take of the prolixity of a legal code, and could scarcely be embraced by the human mind. It could probably never be under stood by the public. Its nature, therefore, requires that only its great outlines should be marked, its important objects designated, and the minor ingredients which compose those objects, be deduced from the nature of the objects themselves. That this idea was entertained by the framers of the Amer ican constitution, is not only to be inferred from the nature of the instrument, but from the language." He perfectly understood that the fathers, in their wisdom, had un dertaken to do no more than construct a framework of governmental timbers, leav ing the filling out of the interior details to legislation and to the defining and expand ing hand of judicial interpretation. While

no one was more content to dwell within the sacred circle marked by the outer walls of the temple, no one was more resolute than Marshall in harmonizing and adorn ing its interior through the application of the resources of judge-made law. Such an application was never more necessary than when the Supreme Court was called upon to create a body of rules sufficiently com prehensive to give effect to that brief and vague constitutional provision, providing that "The Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States." Vast areas of territory were to be acquired and governed, without any definite grant of power to do either. Fortunately, Mar shall and his associates clearly understood that the history of colonization from the Greek days down put beyond question the fact that inhabitants of undeveloped states, while in a colonial condition, have no right, natural or historical, to be admitted at once to the full citizenship guaranteed by the Constitution of the parent state. Jef ferson, the real founder of our territorial system, perfectly understood that truth, and Gotiverneur Morris, the draftsman of the provision in question, wrote at a later day that: "I always thought that when we would acquire Canada and . Louisiana it would be proper to govern them as provinces and allow them no voice in our councils." Fortunately for this country that conserva tive view entertained by the makers of the Constitution, and coined into judge-made law by Marshall and his associates, has not been supplanted by the romantic yet dan gerous afterthought of a later time. Nothing has been more remarkable in the history of our federal constitution than the ease with which it has adapted itself to the ever-increasing wants of a rapidly swell ing population, continually organizing new systems of local government beyond our original limits. When, during Jefferson's second term, the application of steam to