Page:The Supreme Court in United States History vol 1.djvu/507

Rh done by express order of President Madison. Attorney- General Rush argued in their behalf that it has been " the wise policy of the law, by enactments and decisions co-extensive with the range of public oflSce, to throw its shield over oflBcers while acting under fair and honest convictions/' But as Ogden Hoffman and David B. Ogden, counsel for the plaintiff, pointed out, unless the act could be justified under some express authority, it was illegal, and "were it otherwise, the President would be a despot/' The Court, through Judge Story, held that as no statute authorized the President to direct seizure by the civil oflScers, his order constituted no protection to them, if rights of an individual had been trespassed upon. Thus, for a third time and with regard to the instructions of three different Presidents (Adams, Jefferson and Mad- ison), the Court in its short career had shown its inde- pendence of the Executive, and its determination to prove to all that "the Constitution is a law for rulers and for people, equally in war and in i>eace, and covers with its shield of protection all classes of men at all times and under all circumstances." ^

The other case which made this Term one of the most noted in the Court's history was Dartmouth College v. Woodward^ 4 Wheat. 518. No lawsuit has since been more fully or graphically described; yet at the time of its argument, it attracted very little at- tention or interest from the legal profession or from the general public. And it is clear that no one antici- pated that a decision upon the question, whether the State Legislature of New Hampshire had the power

" To the end that this shall be a government of laws and not of men**, were the words of that clause of the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 which distributed the powers of government. "The government of the United States has been emphatically termed a government of laws and not of men'*, Marshall had said in Mofbury v. MadUon.