James Beck

Indeed, it is a serious question with many thoughtful Americans whether the growth of the United States has not put an excessive strain upon its governmental machinery.

The framers believed that a people was best governed that was least governed.

This system of checks and balances again illustrates that the Constitution is the great negation of unrestrained democracy.

As they viewed human history, the worst evils of government were due to excessive concentration of power, which like Othello's jealousy "makes the meat it feeds on.

For this reason, the undue dependence upon the judiciary to nullify every law which either in form, necessary operation, or motive transgresses the Constitution has so far lessened the vigilance of the people to protect their own…

The judiciary, contrary to the common supposition, has no plenary power to nullify unconstitutional laws.

Laws are passed which transgress the limitations of the Constitution without adequate discussion as to their unconstitutional character, for the reason that the determination of this fact is erroneously supposed to be the exclusive…

It abates the vigilance which is said to be ever the price of liberty.

In the United States, however, the confidence that the Supreme Court will itself protect these guaranties of liberty has led to a diminution of the sense of constitutional morality, both in the people and their representatives.

This can only be true because either your representatives in Parliament have a deep sense of constitutional morality, or that the constituencies which select them have so much sense of constitutional justice that their representatives dare…

In your country the power of Parliament is omnipotent, and yet in its legislation it voluntarily observes these great fundamental decencies of liberty which in the American Constitution are protected by formal guarantees.

It must be added, however, that in one respect this function of the judiciary has had an unfortunate effect in lessening rather than developing in the people the sense of constitutional morality.

Nothing more strikingly shows the spirit of unity which the Constitution brought into being than the unbroken success with which the Supreme Court has discharged this difficult and most delicate duty.

Without such power the Constitution could never have lasted, for neither executive officers nor legislatures are good judges of the extent of their own powers.

The United States, however, embodied it in its form of government and thus made the judiciary, and especially the Supreme Court, the balance wheel of the Constitution.

We, however, are not content that a majority of the Legislature shall override inviolable individual rights, about which the judiciary is empowered to throw the solemn circle of the law.

It made the judiciary the final conscience of the nation.

To protect these even against the will of a majority, however large, the judiciary was given unprecedented powers.

My country was founded upon the rock of property rights and the sanctity of contracts.

It is the balance wheel of the Constitution, and to function it must be beyond the possibility of attack and destruction.

Closely allied to this doctrine of limited governmental powers, even by a majority, is the fourth principle of an independent judiciary.

Thus far and no further, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed.

It said to the State: "There is a limit to your power.

They believed that the greater such power, the greater the danger of its abuse.

They were animated by a sleepless jealousy of governmental power.