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 Roger Brooke Taney

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until Jefferson's inauguration, from that time on devoted his great powers to the

legislatures were left untrammeled to

establishment of the court as an eﬁ‘icient part of the government. It constantly

intended, our system so far not only has

preservation of their liberties than if work out for good or ill the results

advanced during the thirty-four years

been found workable and satisfactory

of his administration, assisted and sup

but has successfully stood the perils of internecine conﬂict and the period of

ported by a group of able associates, in the respect and estimation of the country. It is not within the scope of this paper to refer specially to the many notable and earlier decisions by which

nouncement of the doctrine that Con

he may be said to have interpreted the Constitution as a body of organic law, alike adapted for the maintenance of a

gress has no power to pass a statute not within the Constitution. The argu ment of Chief Justice Marshall, while

strong central government as well as recognizing and protecting the autonomy

simple, is conclusive.

of the states.

In the long contest which

reconstruction. In Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, decided in 1803, is found the ﬁrst an

It is, that the

Constitution must be regarded as setting

Monroe and Jackson, and the ever rising

a limit to the legislative power by the terms employed in the instrument, and the Supreme Court, upon which

forces of democracy, the one formidable

original jurisdiction is conferred. must

weapon in the judicial armory to which

decide conformably to the law, rather than disregard the Constitution, where

Marshall waged with Jefferson, Madison,

the executive, and Congress could inter

pose no effective shield, was the power to declare a federal statute void because not within the sanction of the Consti

tution.

If Judge Dillon's view,2 that there are times of great political upheaval and ex citement in a democracy when the people by operation of the organic law must be protected from themselves until normal conditions are restored, is the counter availing balance giving poise to the governmental machinery, yet in England, "where freedom broadens slowly down from precedent to precedent,” an act of

Parliament is supreme, binding alike the courts as well as the subjects of the realm. If the student of forms of government may sometimes hesitate before saying that the power of

the act of the legislature is in conﬂict

with its provisions.

It is interesting to

recall that so much of this decision as discussed the constitutional question and announced this principle was en tirely outside of the record and wholly uncalled for. The court had no juris diction whatever, and so said, of Mar

bury’s petition for a writ of mandamus to compel Madison, who was Jefferson's Secretary of State, to issue to him a. com mission as justice of the peace, to which

office he had been appointed in the clos

ing days of President John Adams’ ad ministration. The political diﬂerences which gave a vivid accentuation to the decision have long since passed,

and irrespective of party aﬂiliations, or that being without jurisdiction this part

a judicial tribunal to thwart the will

of the opinion was wholly irrelevant,

of the electorate as expressed through their chosen legislative representatives

the court has never departed from the

furnishes a greater safeguard for the

principles announced.

If Marshall when he died in the sum mer of

2 Laws and Jurisprudence America, 205, 206.

of

England and

1835 had securely laid this

corner stone of our federal jurispru