shall's summary of their argument at
the outset of his opinion is characteristic: "They maintain," he said,
"that the nation does not possess a department capable of restraining
peaceably, and by authority of law, any attempts which may be made by a
part against the legitimate powers of the whole, and that the government
is reduced to the alternative of submitting to such attempts or of
resisting them by force. They maintain that the Constitution of the
United States has provided no tribunal for the final construction of
itself or of the laws or treaties of the nation, but that this power
must be exercised in the last resort by the courts of every State in
the Union. That the Constitution, laws, and treaties may receive as many
constructions as there are States; and that this is not a mischief, or,
if a mischief, is irremediable."

The cause of such absurdities, Marshall continued, was a conception of
State Sovereignty contradicted by the very words of the Constitution,
which assert its supremacy, and that of all acts of Congress in
pursuance of it, over all conflicting state laws whatsoever. "This," he
proceeded to say, "is the authoritative language of the American People,
and if gentlemen please, of the American States. It marks, with lines
too strong to be mistaken, the characteristic distinction between the
Government of the Union and those of the States. The General Government,
though limited as to its objects, is supreme with respect to those
objects. This principle is a part of the Constitution, and if there be
any who deny its necessity, none can deny its authority." Nor was
this to say that the Constitution is unalterable. "The people make the
Constitution, and the people can unmake it. It is the creature of
their own will, and lives only by their will. But this supreme and
irresistible power to make or unmake resides only in the whole body of
the people, not in any subdivision of them. The attempt of any of the
parts to exercise it is usurpation, and ought to be repelled by those to
whom the people have delegated their power of repelling it."

Once Marshall had swept aside the irrelevant notion of State
Sovereignty, he proceeded with the remainder of his argument without
difficulty. Counsel for Virginia had contended that "a case arising
under the Constitution or a law must be one in which a party comes into
court to demand something conferred on him by the Constitution or a
law"; but this construction Marsh