Orrin Hatch: “Our Nation's Founders knew, in the sage words of James Madison in Federalist 47, that ``[t]he accumulation of all…”

“Our Nation's Founders knew, in the sage words of James Madison in Federalist 47, that ``[t]he accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands . . . may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.'' They bestowed upon us the blessing of the Constitution that creates a Federal Government with limited and enumerated powers, with those powers diffused and balanced between three coequal branches of government. The Federal judiciary occupies a unique station in this constitutional architecture. In deciding cases and controversies, it is, in the seminal words of Marbury v. Madison, ``emphatically the province and the duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.'' Unelected and armed with life tenure and salary protection, judges thereby have the power to hold the political branches to account. This power is the source of much of the Constitution's great brilliance in its ability to restrain transient political majorities from exceeding the authority granted to government by the sovereign people; however, it is also the source of one of the great potential pitfalls of our system of government, in which five lawyers can substitute their personal policy preferences to the legitimate judgments of the executive and legislative branches, thereby usurping the powers of the self-governing people.…”