I. THE CONSTITUTION AND AMERICAN IDEAS. II. THE CONSTITUTION AND THE COURT. "When I consider the amazing extent of this country, the immense population which is to fill it, the influence of the government we are to form will have, not only on the present generation of our people and their multiplied posterity, but on the whole globe - I am lost in the magnitude of the object." -JAMES WILSON, in the Federal Convention, June 25, 1787. "We are providing for our posterity, for our children and our grandchildren, who would be as likely to be citizens of new Western States as of old States.' - ROGER SHERMAN, in the Federal Convention, July 14, 1787. "The Constitution is a written instrument. As such its meaning does not alter. That which it meant when adopted, it means now. Being a grant of powers to a government, its language is general, and as changes come in social and political life it embraces in its grasp all new conditions which are within the scope of the powers in terms conferred. . . . Those things which are within its grants of power, as those grants were understood when made, are still within them, and those things not within them remain still excluded. . . . It must also be remembered that the framers of the Constitution were not mere visionaries, toying with speculations or theories, but practical men, dealing with the facts of political life as they understood them, putting into form the government they were creating, and prescribing in language clear and intelligible the powers that government was to take. BREWER, J., in South Carolina v. United States (1905), 199 U. S. 437, 448, 456. "In bestowing the eulogies due to the particular and internal checks of power, it ought not the less to be remembered that they are neither the sole nor the chief palladium of constitutional liberty. The people who are authors of this blessing must also be its guardians. Their eyes must be ever ready to mark, their voice to pronounce, and their arms to repel or repair, aggressions on the authority of their Constitutions." JAMES MADISON, in National Gazette (Phil.), February 6, 1792. "It is our propitious fortune to exist under a Government that has, in the main, answered all the great ends for which governments are instituted – enjoyed, in fact, a system of regulated liberty more perfect in its past operations than any which has hitherto existed in the world. It is the part of wisdom to abstain from change, until the actual existence or threatened approach of danger is clearly and satisfactorily demonstrated." - GEORGE MCDUFFIE of South Carolina, in the House, Feb. 15, 1826. 19th Cong., 1st Sess. CONGRESS, THE CONSTITUTION, AND THE SUPREME COURT CHAPTER ONE THE CONSTITUTION AND AMERICAN IDEAS "The Constitution has laid down the fundamental and immutable laws of justice for our Government, and the majority that constitutes the Government should not violate these. The Constitution is made to control the Government, it has no other object." — WILLIAM HARPER of South Carolina, in the Senate, April 14, 1826. 19th Cong., 1st Sess. "It is not to the scrip of parchment on which the Constitution was originally enrolled, that we are to look for the people's rights. Instead of looking for the people's rights, it is there you (Congress) must search for your powers. It is in that instrument, the people have told you what they have given; and such powers as they have not there given, they have expressly retained.". - MICAH TAIL of Kentucky, in the House, Jan. 20, 1817. 14th Cong., 2d Sess. "The framers of the Constitution took particular care, not only to define the power they intended to give, but the objects to which that power should be applied, and, therefore, but for these defined objects, Congress have no powers at all." - LABAN WHEATON of Massachusetts, in the House, Jan. 9, 1813. 12th Cong., 2d Sess. "Our government is a government of checks; the power given by the Constitution to the Legislature is not general, but special; it is not omnipotent, but limited; therefore, necessarily a check against it must exist somewhere." - AARON OGDEN of New Jersey, in the Senate, Feb. 2, 1802. 7th Cong., 1st Sess. "It is impossible to avoid error of construction, if the Constitution of the United States be regarded (as it most frequently is by American statesmen) as furnishing the whole fundamental law governing the action of the Federal Government. The Constitutions of the several States form as much a part of the great code of constitutional law as the Constitution of the United States. The latter is but an emanation |