merely a Chief Executive. Such a connection
proving to be so slight as to be little more than a fiction, they
formed, under the Constitution of 1787, the only other kind of a union
which appears to be practicable, namely, a union under a common
government which was a Chief Legislature for all the connected and
united states by their voluntary grant, and whose powers were
expressly limited, by limitation in the grant, to the common purposes
of the whole connection and union of free states.

The power exercised by a Justiciar State in a Justiciary Union, the
Fathers recognized as being neither strictly legislative, nor strictly
executive, nor strictly judicial, but a power compounded of all these
three powers. They considered that it was to be exercised after
investigation by judicial methods, both of the facts and principles
and of the public sentiment; that the just public sentiment of the
free states connected and united with the Justiciar State was to be
executed in local matters and was to be considered in the
determination of the common affairs; and that the action of the
Justiciar State was to result, after proper hearing of the free states
concerned, in regulations which were to have the force of supreme law
in each of the connected and united free states respectively. This
kind of power, which the Fathers called "the superintending power" or
"the disposing power" under the law of nature and of nations, and
which may be called, using an expression now coming into use, "the
power of final decision," being neither legislative nor executive, but
more nearly executive than legislative, the more conservative among
them considered might be exercised, consistently with the principles
of the law of nature and of nations, either by the Legislative
Assembly of the Justiciar State or by its Chief Executive. This right
of both the Legislative Assembly and of the Chief Executive to
exercise the powers of the Justiciar State under the law of nature and
of nations is, I believe, also recognized by our Constitution, as I
have elsewhere attempted to show.

The Fathers further considered, if my understanding of their belief is
correct, that, inasmuch as both the Legislative Assembly and the Chief
Executive of the Justiciar State, in exercising its power over the free
states connected and united with it, and throughout the Justiciary
Union, have as their function the ascertainment of facts and the
application of the principles of