dependent body, will be
superior to that of the legislature. The power of construing the laws
according to the spirit of the Constitution, will enable that court to
mould them into whatever shape it may think proper; especially as
its decisions will not be in any manner subject to the revision or
correction of the legislative body. This is as unprecedented as it is
dangerous. In Britain, the judicial power, in the last resort, resides in
the House of Lords, which is a branch of the legislature; and this part
of the British government has been imitated in the State constitutions
in general. The Parliament of Great Britain, and the legislatures of
the several States, can at any time rectify, by law, the exceptionable
decisions of their respective courts. But the errors and usurpations
of the Supreme Court of the United States will be uncontrollable
and remediless." This, upon examination, will be found to be made up
altogether of false reasoning upon misconceived fact.

In the first place, there is not a syllable in the plan under
consideration which directly empowers the national courts to construe
the laws according to the spirit of the Constitution, or which gives
them any greater latitude in this respect than may be claimed by the
courts of every State. I admit, however, that the Constitution ought to
be the standard of construction for the laws, and that wherever there is
an evident opposition, the laws ought to give place to the Constitution.
But this doctrine is not deducible from any circumstance peculiar to
the plan of the convention, but from the general theory of a limited
Constitution; and as far as it is true, is equally applicable to
most, if not to all the State governments. There can be no objection,
therefore, on this account, to the federal judicature which will not lie
against the local judicatures in general, and which will not serve to
condemn every constitution that attempts to set bounds to legislative
discretion.

But perhaps the force of the objection may be thought to consist in the
particular organization of the Supreme Court; in its being composed of
a distinct body of magistrates, instead of being one of the branches of
the legislature, as in the government of Great Britain and that of the
State. To insist upon this point, the authors of the objection must
renounce the meaning they have labored to annex to the celebrated
maxim, requiring a separation of the departments of power. It shall,
ne