n committed to writing if these limits
may at any time be passed by those intended to be restrained? The
distinction between a government with limited and unlimited powers is
abolished if those limits do not confine the persons on whom they are
imposed, and if acts prohibited and acts allowed are of equal
obligation. It is a proposition too plain to be contested, either that
the Constitution controls any legislative act repugnant to it, or that
the legislature may alter the Constitution by an ordinary act.
Between these alternatives there is no middle ground. The Constitution
is either a superior, paramount law unchangeable by ordinary means, or
it is on a level with ordinary legislative acts, and, like other acts,
is alterable when the legislature shall please to alter it....
Certainly all those who have framed written constitutions contemplate
them as forming the fundamental and paramount law of the nation, and
consequently the theory of every such government must be that an act
of the legislature repugnant to the Constitution is void."

In 1825 that eminent jurist, Chief Justice Gibson of Pennsylvania, in
a dissenting opinion in _Eakin_ v. _Raub_, 12 _S. & R._ 330, insisted
in an able, elaborate, and exhaustive argument that while the
judiciary was bound to refuse effect to a state statute in conflict
with the Federal Constitution, it was bound to give it effect if
repugnant only to the state constitution. He frankly admitted the
logical conclusion that in such case the only remedy the citizen had
to enforce his constitutional rights was that of revolution. When,
however, his opinion in _Eakin_ v. _Raub_ was cited in 1845 in
argument in _Norris_ v. _Clymer_, 2 _Pa. St._ 277, he said he had
changed his opinion on that question, partly "from experience of
the necessity of the case." In the later case, _De Chastellux_ v.
_Fairchild_, 15 _Pa. St._ 18, he was emphatic in his declaration of
the power and duty of the court to refuse effect to a state statute in
conflict with the state constitution. In delivering the opinion of the
court he used this vigorous language: "It is idle to say the authority
of each branch (of the government) is defined and limited in the
constitution, if there be not an independent power able and willing to
enforce the limitations.... From its very position it is apparent that
the conservative power is lodged with the judiciary, which in the
exercise of its undoubted right is bound to meet every e