Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/54

The favorite allegation of consolidationists is that the Constitution and the laws made in pursuance thereof are the supreme law of the land. No one questions that statement, but what is the Constitution, what laws are in pursuance thereof? The consequent assumption is that the Supreme court is the safe referee and the final judge. In all questions of a judicial nature of which the court has lawful cognizance, it is the final judge and interpreter, and there is no power in the government to which the court belongs to reverse its decisions or resist its authority, but the jurisdiction of the Federal courts is limited and the Federal judiciary is only a department of the government whose acts are called in question. Numerous instances of usurped powers might occur which the form of the Constitution could never draw within the control of the judicial department. The Supreme court might assume jurisdiction over subjects not allowed by the Constitution and there is no power in the general government to gainsay it. Charles Sumner, associated in the Northern mind with John Brown, as a semi-inspired apostle, spoke in 1854 in lofty scorn of according to the Supreme court the "power of fastening such in terpretation as they see fit upon any part of the Constitution adding to it, or subtracting from it, or positively varying its requirements actually making and unmaking the Constitution; and to their work all good citizens must bow as of equal authority with the original instrument. " Sometimes the court is divided, the dissenting judges possessing by universal concession the greater wisdom, more legal learning and ability ; sometimes, not bound by its own judgment, the court reverses its decisions and stands on both sides of a question. If the court itself be not constrained by its own precedents how can co-ordinate branches under oath to support the Constitution," and the creating States, "like the court itself, called incidentally to interpret the Constitution, be constrained by them?" Sometimes to procure a. reversal it