of the National Legislature to sanction or enforce them. What, for instance, would avail the restrictions on the states, without some constitutional mode of compelling their observance? The individual states are prohibited from the performance of a variety of acts, some of which are incompatible with the objects and interests of the Union, and others with the principles of good policy. The imposition by state authority of duties on imported articles is an example of the first, and the emission of bills of credit a specimen of the second. Now, in the face of the experience afforded under the former confederation, it will hardly be pretended that such prohibitions would be scrupulously regarded without some effectual power in the government to restrain or correct their violation. The power must either be a direct negative on the state laws, vested in the executive power of the Union (which, indeed, was proposed as the alternative in the General Convention), or an authority in the Federal Courts to overrule such laws of the several states as contravene the National Constitution. The latter expedient was preferred by the Convention, and was unquestionably most acceptable to their constituents; and there is no third course that can be imagined, short of the doctrine of nullification, which assumes a power in any one state to suspend, if not to subvert, within its own limits, the acts and operations of every department of the Federal Government, though every other member of the Union admit their validity and submit to their authority.

As to extending the jurisdiction of the national courts to all cases arising under the laws of the United States, it seems impossible, by any argument or illustration, to render its propriety clearer than it appears from the mere statement of the question.

If there be such things as political axioms or truths in the science of government too plain to be disputed, the principle already stated, that "the judicial power must be coextensive with the power of legislation," must certainly be one of them; and in governments formed from the union of the people of so many separate and independent states, as well as of those states themselves, as one nation, organized under a written compact of government, the mere necessity of uniformity in the interpretation of the national laws is sufficient to decide the question. If the courts of the United States have not this paramount jurisdiction, it must remain without control in the tribunals of the states; and six-and-twenty independent judicatures, with final jurisdiction over the same kind of causes, arising under the same laws, would present a monstrous anomaly in judicial organization and procedure, from which nothing but contradiction and confusion could ensue. The peo

ple of the United States have declared that the Constitution and the laws, and all treaties made in pursuance of it, shall be the supreme law of the land; and that the judges in every state shall be bound by it, "anything in the constitution and laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding." Congress, no more than the state legislatures, have power to pass laws repugnant to the Federal Constitution; because that Constitution is not only the paramount, but also the fundamental law; and those laws only which are passed in pursuance of the Constitution are declared to be supreme, in reference to the constitutions and laws of the states. Every act, therefore, of Congress, as well as of the state legislatures, and every part of the constitution of any state, which is repugnant to the Constitution of the United States, is necessarily void. This we must regard as a clear and settled

principle of our national jurisprudence, unalterable by any authority but that from which the national compact is derived, and not liable to change even by that authority, except in the mode prescribed by the instrument itself. Now, as the judicial power of the Union is declared to extend to all cases arising under the Constitution, to that power it must necessarily belong, in cases wherein the question is judicially presented for decision, to determine what is the supreme law; and the judgment of the Supreme Court must be final and conclusive, because the Cònstitution invests that tribunal with the power to decide, and gives no appeal from its decision. But if an act of Congress admit of two interpretations, one of which brings it within, and the other presses it beyond the constitutional authority of Congress, it is the duty of the courts to adopt the former construction, because a presumption ought never to be indulged that Congress meant to exercise or usurp any unconstitutional authority.

Some perplexity exists in regard to the right of courts of justice to pronounce legislative acts void, on the ground of their unconstitutionality, from apprehension that the doctrine would establish a superiority of the judicial over the legislative power. As the subject is of great practical importance, a rapid survey of the grounds on which it was defended by our most eminent statesmen cannot be disadvantageous; especially as it exhibits a contemporaneous construction of the highest authority of that part of the Constitution. "There is no position," say the illustrious authors of "The Federalist," "which depends on clearer principles, than that every act of a delegated authority, contrary to the commission under which it is exercised, is void." No legislative act, therefore, contrary to the Constitution, which is the commis

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sion by which every department of the government equally derives its authority from the people, can be valid. To deny this would be to affirm that the deputy is superior to his principal; that the servant is above his master; that the representatives of the people are greater than the people themselves; and that persons acting in virtue of a delegated authority not only assume what their powers do not authorize, but what they expressly forbid. If it be alleged that legislative bodies are themselves the constitutional judges of their own powers, and that their own construction of them is conclusive upon the other departments, it may be answered, that this cannot be the natural presumption where it is not to be collected from the particular provisions of the fundamental compact. Without such express provision, it is not to be intended that the Constitution meant to enable

the representatives of the people to substitute their own will in the place of that of their constituents: it is far more rational to conclude that the courts of justice were only intended to represent the sovereignty of the people, in a co-ordinate and independent department; and, in that capacity, to act as an intermediate body between the people and the Legislature, in order, among other things, to keep the latter within the limits assigned to its authority..

The interpretation of the laws is the proper and peculiar province of the courts; and the Constitution is, in fact, and must be regarded by them, as a fundamental law. It must therefore belong to them to ascertain its meaning, as well as the meaning of any particular act proceeding from the legislative body. If there should happen to be an irreconcilable variance between the two, that which has the superior obligation ought, of course, to be preferred: in other words, the Constitution ought to be preferred

to the statute; the intention of the people to the intention of their agents. Nor does this conclusion, by any means, suppose a superiority of the judicial to the legislative power. It only presunes that the power of the people is superior to both; and where the will of the Legislature, declared in the statutebook, stands opposed to the will of the people, declared in the Constitution, the judges are to be governed by the latter rather than the former, and ought to regulate their decisions by that fundamental law, over which the Legislature has no control, rather than by those which it may at any time alter or repeal, and which derive their validity and effect from the Constitution alone. It can be of no weight to say that the courts of justice, under the pretence of a repugnancy between a law and the Constitution, may substitute their own pleasure in the stead of the constitutional intentions of the Legislature, for this supposition not only involves a petition of the question, but might as well happen in the case of two contradictory statutes, or in every separate adjudication upon the same statute. The courts are bound to declare the meaning of the law; and if they should be disposed to exercise will instead of judgment, the consequence in the one case, as well as the other, would be the substitution of their own pleasure in lieu of the pleasure of the Legislature. The objection, therefore, if it proved anything, would prove that there should be no judges distinct from the legislative body. But the danger of intrusting judicial and legislative powers in the same hands has already been pointed out; and I have shown, I think, that the object of their separation was not only to create a distinct and independent body to expound the laws, but also to erect à bulwark to defend a constitution, limited in its powers,