John Marshall: Life, Character and Judicial Services as Portrayed in the Centenary and Memorial Addresses and Proceedings Throughout the United States on Marshall Day, 1901, and in the Classic Orations of Binney, Story, Phelps, Waite and Rawle, Volume 3John Forrest Dillon Callaghan & Company, 1903 |
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Popular passages
Page 37 - We admit, as all must admit, that the powers of the government are limited, and that its limits are not to be transcended. But we think the sound construction of the constitution must allow to the national legislature that discretion, with respect to the means by which the powers it confers are to be carried into execution, which will enable that body to perform the high duties assigned to it, in the manner most beneficial to the people.
Page 417 - 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.
Page 298 - Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise (That last infirmity of noble mind) To scorn delights and live laborious days; But the fair guerdon when we hope to find, And think to burst out into sudden blaze, Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears, And slits the thin-spun life. 'But not the praise...
Page 416 - The question, whether an act, repugnant to the Constitution, can become the law of the land, is a question deeply interesting to the United States; but, happily, not of an intricacy proportioned to its interest. It seems only necessary to recognize certain principles, supposed to have been long and well established, to decide it.
Page 218 - the American constitution is the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man...
Page 416 - It is a proposition too plain to be contested that the Constitution controls any legislative act repugnant to it, or that the legislature may alter the Constitution by an ordinary act.
Page 38 - Should Congress, in the execution of its powers, adopt measures which are prohibited by the constitution ; or should Congress, under the pretext of executing its powers pass laws for the accomplishment of objects not intrusted to the government, it would become the painful duty of this tribunal, should a case requiring such a decision come before it, to say that such an act was not the law of the land.
Page 422 - The Judicial Department comes home in its effects to every man's fireside : it passes on his property, his reputation, his life, his all. Is it not, to the last degree important, that he should be rendered perfectly and completely independent, with nothing to influence or control him but God and his conscience?
Page 53 - The government of the Union, then (whatever may be the influence of this fact on the case), is emphatically and truly a government of the people. In form and in substance it emanates from them, its powers are granted by them, and are to be exercised directly on them, and for their benefit.
Page 121 - You seem, in pages 84 and 148, to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions — a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so. They have, with others, the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps. Their maxim is, 'boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem...