limits and binds all who
act in the name of the United States; it limits the powers of Congress
and defines the rights of citizens. If Congress can ignore its
limitations and trespass upon the rights of citizens, Marshall argued,
then the Constitution disappears and Congress is supreme. Since,
however, the Constitution is supreme and superior to Congress, it is the
duty of judges, under their oath of office, to sustain it against
measures which violate it. Therefore, from the nature of the American
constitutional system the courts must declare null and void all acts
which are not authorized. "A law repugnant to the Constitution," he
closed, "is void and the courts as well as other departments are bound
by that instrument." From that day to this the practice of federal and
state courts in passing upon the constitutionality of laws has remained
unshaken.

This doctrine was received by Jefferson and many of his followers with
consternation. If the idea was sound, he exclaimed, "then indeed is our
Constitution a complete _felo de se_ [legally, a suicide]. For,
intending to establish three departments, cooerdinate and independent
that they might check and balance one another, it has given, according
to this opinion, to one of them alone the right to prescribe rules for
the government of the others, and to that one, too, which is unelected
by and independent of the nation.... The Constitution, on this
hypothesis, is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary which
they may twist and shape into any form they please. It should be
remembered, as an axiom of eternal truth in politics, that whatever
power in any government is independent, is absolute also.... A judiciary
independent of a king or executive alone is a good thing; but
independence of the will of the nation is a solecism, at least in a
republican government." But Marshall was mighty and his view prevailed,
though from time to time other men, clinging to Jefferson's opinion,
likewise opposed the exercise by the Courts of the high power of passing
upon the constitutionality of acts of Congress.

=Acts of State Legislatures Declared Unconstitutional.=--Had Marshall
stopped with annulling an act of Congress, he would have heard less
criticism from Republican quarters; but, with the same firmness, he set
aside acts of state legislatures as well, whenever, in his opinion, they
violated the federal Constitution. In 1810, in the case of Fletcher
_vs._ Peck, he annul