the powers granted under the Constitution? Is the Supreme Court the sole judge of its own jurisdiction, and is it authorized to declare what the supreme law is? Did the Constitution establish an efficient and permanent government, or is the Constitution, in the words of Marshall, only "a solemn mockery," "a magnificent structure, indeed, to look at, but totally unfit for use "? Is it, as Pinkney exclaimed in McCulloch v. Maryland, "a competent guardian of all that is dear to us as a nation," or is it "a mere phantom of political power, a pageant of mimic sovereignty"?

The supremacy of the Constitution was attacked in many ways. It was insisted that the Constitution did not destroy, as an ultimate question, the sovereignty of the States. The Supreme Court is not the judge of its own jurisdiction, because that would make it sovereign. It might be a convenient agency in the government, but it is inconsistent with the nature of sovereignty that a sovereign State should submit to its judgments. This would make the agent the master, and the Supreme Court would become a menace to the States. There exists no supervisory power in the Supreme Court to revise the action of a sovereign State. It has no right to nullify the legislative act of a State. It has no power to declare void an Act of Congress, because, under the Constitution, the government is organized into co-ordinate departments of

equal authority. The powers expressly granted to Congress and the prohibitions imposed on the States, under the Constitution, should receive a strict construction. The power of Congress to make all necessary and proper laws to carry into effect the powers granted by the Constitution should not be expanded by implication to cover other powers not specifically enumerated.

The answers to these and other contentions are found in Marshall's decisions, and they are embraced in certain fundamental conclusions: The Constitution organizes a government complete within itself. It establishes a perpetual Union and is the guardian of the rights of the people. For these great purposes the powers conferred by that instrument are sufficient. Under the Confederation the central authority exerted its action upon sovereign States, and they were not compelled to obey its mandates. Under the Constitution the Federal powers are exerted directly upon the people, and they establish a government, as distinguished from a mere confederation, with the usual powers of a government, and organized into different departments. The Constitution does not limit the exercise of Federal power to strictly Federal subjects, but goes beyond, and by its prohibitions upon the States shields the personal rights of the individual. Sovereignty in the United States resides in the people. It does

not rest, as in England, with Parliament, or with the sovereign ruler, as in many European countries. The people have surrendered a portion of their sovereignty in the form of a written Constitution, and the people only can revoke, alter, or amend their own supreme law. The national authority is conferred and measured by the Federal Constitution, and "prescription cannot aid it, nor precedent enlarge it." The Constitution is the supreme law of the land, and as such is supreme over all citizens and over State authority. The reserve powers of the States cannot stay the operation of the supreme law.

The Union being perpetual, it cannot be dissolved by a part of the States or by the people of those States. The Federal government is the final judge of the nature and extent of its powers under the Constitution. The Supreme Court is the judge of its own jurisdiction and of what the law is. It may nullify an Act of Congress or of a State, and it has a supervisory power over the judgments of the highest courts of a State where a constitutional question is involved. There are also implied powers in the Constitution, and if the end be legitimate, the means appropriate to that end, when not prohibited, are constitutional, if within the spirit and scope of that instrument.

Such were some of the principles of construction applied to the Constitution in Marshall's decisions,

which, for lucid and cogent reasoning, power of analysis, comprehensiveness, and broad generalization, have never been surpassed. They cover the great underlying problems of constitutional interpretation. They deal with the questions of the powers granted to Congress, the reserved powers of the States, and the restrictions imposed upon the States by the expressed and implied powers of Congress.

Marbury v. Madison was one of Marshall's earlier and most famous decisions. It was there held that the Constitution is the supreme law, that an Act of Congress repugnant thereto is void, and that the Supreme Court is the final judge of the fundamental law.

"The question," said the Chief Justice, "whether an act repugnant to the Constitution can become the law of the land is a question deeply interesting to the United States. . . . That the people have an original right to establish, for their future government, such principles, as in their opinion, shall most conduce to their own happiness, is the basis on which the whole American fabric has been erected. . . . This original and supreme will organizes the government, and assigns to different departments their respective powers. The Constitution is either a superior, paramount law, unchangeable by ordinary means, or it is on a level with ordinary legislative acts, and, like other acts, is alterable when the legislature shall please to

alter it. If the former part of the alternative be true, then a legislative act contrary to the Constitution is not law; if the latter part be true, then written constitutions are absurd attempts, on the part of the people, to limit a power in its own nature illimitable.

"Certainly all those who have framed written constitutions contemplate them as forming the fundamental and paramount law of the nation, and, consequently, the theory of every such government must be, that an act of the legislature repugnant to the Constitution is void.

"This theory is essentially attached to a written constitution, and is consequently to be considered by this Court as one of the fundamental principles of our society. . . . It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is. . . . This is of the very essence of judicial duty. Those then who controvert the principle that the Constitution is to be considered in court as a paramount law are reduced to the necessity of maintaining that courts must close their eyes on the Constitution, and see only the law. This doctrine would subvert the very foundation of all written constitutions. It would declare that an act which, according to the principles and theory of our government, is entirely void, is yet, in practice, completely obligatory. It would declare that, if the legislature shall do what is expressly forbidden, such act, notwithstanding the