John Marshall and the Constitution: A Chronicle of the Supreme Court

Front Cover
Glasgow, Brook, 1919 - Biography & Autobiography - 242 pages
 

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 70 - If two laws conflict with each other, the courts must decide on the operation of each. So if a law be in opposition to the constitution, if both the law and the constitution apply to a particular case, so that the court must either decide that case conformably to the law disregarding the constitution, or conformably to the constitution disregarding the law, the court must determine which of these conflicting rules governs the case. This is of the very essence of judicial duty.
Page 70 - The distinction between a government with limited and unlimited powers is abolished, if those limits do not confine the persons on whom they are imposed, and if acts prohibited *and acts allowed, are of equal obligation.
Page 58 - Let us then, fellowcitizens, unite with one heart and one mind ; let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection, without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things; and let us reflect that having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions.
Page 141 - If, as has always been understood, the sovereignty of congress, though limited to specified objects is plenary as to those objects the power over commerce with foreign nations, and among the several States, is vested in congress as absolutely as it would be in a single government, having in its constitution the same restrictions on the exercise of the power as are found in the constitution of the United States.
Page 50 - The President is the sole organ of the nation in its external relations, and its sole representative with foreign nations.
Page 110 - It is not the intention of the court to say, that no individual can be guilty of this crime, who has not appeared in arms against his country; on the contrary, if war be actually levied, that is, if a body of men be...
Page 113 - We of the jury say that Aaron Burr is not proved to be guilty under this indictment by any evidence submitted to us. We therefore find him not guilty.
Page 114 - But if he has no choice in the case ; if there is no alternative presented to him but a dereliction of duty, or the opprobrium of those who are denominated the world, he merits the contempt as well as the indignation of his country, who can hesitate which to embrace.
Page 70 - It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is. Those who apply the rule to particular cases must of necessity expound and interpret that rule. If two laws conflict with each other, the courts must decide on the operation of each.
Page 137 - That the power to tax involves the power to destroy ; that the power to destroy may defeat and render useless the power to create ; that there is a plain repugnance in conferring on one government a power to control the constitutional measures of another, which other, with respect to those very measures, is declared to be supreme over that which exerts the control, are propositions not to be denied.

Bibliographic information