a year by abolishing the August term. In 1832, when the State
of Georgia defied the decree of the Court in a case involving the status
of the Cherokee Indians, the other departments of the Federal Government
gave no aid and President Andrew Jackson is reported to have remarked:
"John Marshall has made the decision, now let him execute it." In 1868,
Congress, in order to forestall decision in a case pending before the
Court, hastily repealed the statute on which the jurisdiction of the
Court depended.[1] Such instances, however, have been rare. The
law-abiding instinct is strong in the American people, and for the most
part the decisions of the Supreme Court have been received with respect
and unquestioning obedience.

[Footnote 1: See _ex parte McCardle_, 6 Wall. (Supreme Court Reports),
318; 7 _id._, 506.]

The chief weapon in the arsenal of the Court is the power to declare
legislative acts void on the ground that they overstep limits
established by the people in the Constitution. This power has been
frequently exercised. It is stated that the congressional statutes thus
nullified have not numbered more than thirty, while at least a thousand
state laws have been nullified.[1]

[Footnote 1: Brief of Solicitor General James M. Beck in the Child Labor
Tax cases. It is to be borne in mind that there are forty-eight state
legislatures and only one Congress.]

The assumption of this power in the Court to declare statutes
unconstitutional has been bitterly assailed, and is still denounced in
some quarters, as judicial usurpation originated by John Marshall.

On the historical side this objection is not well founded. Various state
courts had exercised the power to declare statutes unconstitutional
before the Supreme Court came into existence.[1] The framers of the
Constitution clearly intended that such a power should be exercised by
the Supreme Court.[2] Moreover, a somewhat similar power appears to have
been exercised long before in England,[3] though it gave place later to
the present doctrine of the legal omnipotence of Parliament.

[Footnote 1: See Bryce: "The American Commonwealth," Vol. I, p. 250.]

[Footnote 2: See e.g., "Federalist," No. LXXVIII.]

[Footnote 3: See opinion of Lord Coke in Bonham's Case, 8 Coke's
Reports, 118, decided in 1610.]

On the side of reason and logic, the argument in favor of the power
formulated more than a century ago by Chief Justice Marshall has never
been adequately answered a