ion, is not a law. Such an enactment should strictly have no more
legal effect than the resolution of any private debating society. The
constitution also provides that the judicial power of the United States
shall extend to all cases in law and equity arising under the constitution
and laws of the United States. Whenever, therefore, in a case before a
Federal court rights are asserted under or against some law which is
claimed to violate some limitation of the constitution, the court is
obliged to say whether the law does violate the constitution or not,
because if it does not violate the constitution the court must give effect
to it as law, while if it does violate the constitution it is no law at all
and the court is not at liberty to give effect to it. The courts do not
render decisions like imperial rescripts declaring laws valid or invalid.
They merely render judgment on the rights of the litigants in particular
cases, and in arriving at their judgment they refuse to give effect to
statutes which they find clearly not to be made in pursuance of the
constitution and therefore to be no laws at all. Their judgments are
technically binding only in the particular case decided, but the knowledge
that the court of last resort has reached such a conclusion concerning a
statute, and that a similar conclusion would undoubtedly be reached in
every case of an attempt to found rights upon the same statute, leads to a
general acceptance of the invalidity of the statute.

There is only one alternative to having the courts decide upon the validity
of legislative acts, and that is by requiring the courts to treat the
opinion of the legislature upon the validity of its statutes, evidenced
by their passage, as conclusive. But the effect of this would be that the
legislature would not be limited at all except by its own will. All the
provisions designed to maintain a government carried on by officers of
limited powers, all the distinctions between what is permitted to the
national government and what is permitted to the state governments, all
the safeguards of the life, liberty and property of the citizen against
arbitrary power, would cease to bind Congress, and on the same theory they
would cease also to bind the legislatures of the states. Instead of the
constitution being superior to the laws the laws would be superior to
the constitution, and the essential principles of our government would
disappear. More than one hundred years ag