the power of the majority. "I conceive
the remedy of a new election," he says, "to be of very little
consequence, because this would only secure the views of a
majority...."[68] Iredell expressed what was no doubt the real purpose
of the judicial veto--the limitation of the power of the majority.

In eight of the thirteen states the doctrine that the judiciary could
refuse to enforce laws regularly enacted by the legislative body had not
even been asserted by the courts themselves, much less recognized and
accepted by the people generally. There is no evidence to warrant the
belief that this power was anywhere claimed or exercised in response to
a popular demand or that it had at this time become a firmly established
or generally recognized feature of any state government.

This being the case, there is no ground for the contention that the
power to annul acts of the legislature was necessarily implied in the
general grant of judicial authority contained in the Constitution.
Moreover, it was not expressly conferred, for the Constitution as
submitted and ratified contains no reference to this power.

"There is no provision in the Constitution of the United States ...
which clothes the judiciary with the power to declare an act of the
legislature generally null and void on account of its conceived
repugnance to the Constitution or on any other account."[69]

It has been claimed that in this respect our general government is even
less democratic than the framers of the Constitution intended. This
view, however, is not borne out by the facts. The assertion of this
far-reaching power by our national judiciary, though not expressly
authorized by the Constitution, was nevertheless in harmony with the
general spirit and intention of its framers. That the members of the
Constitutional Convention declined to confer this power in unequivocal
language does not justify the inference that they did not wish and
intend that it should be exercised by the courts.

Gouverneur Morris, who claims to have written the Constitution with his
own hand, tells us that in framing that part of it relating to the
judiciary, "it became necessary to select phrases," which, expressing
his own views, "would not alarm others."[70] There was, it is true, some
objection in the Convention to the doctrine that the Supreme Court
should have authority to decide upon the constitutionality of
Congressional legislation. Mercer and Dickinson believed that this