Page:The Supreme Court in United States History vol 1.djvu/31

Rh ing feature of the first century of its existence should be noted — that the chief conflicts arose over the Court's decisions restricting the limits of State authority and not over those restricting the limits of Congressional power. Discontent with its decisions on the latter subject arose, not because the Court held an Act of Congress unconstitutional, but rather because it re- fused to do so; the Anti-Federalists and the early Republicans assailed the Court because it failed to hold the Sedition Law, the Bank of the United States charter and the Judiciary Act unconstitutional; the Democrats later attacked the Court for ^oimcing^^ doctrines which would sustain the constitutionality of an Internal Improvement bill, a volimtary Bankruptcy bill, a Protective Tariflf bill and similar measures ob- noxious to them ; the Federalists equally attacked the Court for refusing to hold imconstitutional the Em- bargo Act, and the later Republicans assailed it for sustaining the Fugitive Slave Act. It was in respect to its exercise of a restraining power over the States that the Court met with its chief opposition. That the Federal Judiciary would of necessity be the focus of at- tack in all important controversies between the States and the Nation was fully recognized by the framers of the Constitution, but it was the essential pivot of their whole plan.^ The success of the new Govern- ment depended on the existence of a supreme tribunal, free from local political bias or prejudice, vested with power to give an interpretation to Federal laws and treaties which should be uniform throughout the land,

^ Rufus Sang wrote to Jonathan Jackson, Sept. 3, 1786 : "Mr. Madison of Virgiaia has been here for some time past ; he will attend the Convention. He does not discover or propose any other plan than that of investing Congress with full powers for the regulation of commerce foreign and domestic. But this power win run deep into the authorities of the individual States, and can never be well exercised without a Federal Judicial." Mau. Hist, Soc, Proc, (1915-16),