ill excuse me if I talk for a few minutes about the court of which
I have the honor to be a member--the Supreme Court of the United States.
That court, if it is nothing else, certainly is a hard-working court. It
is a court of which a great deal is required; and it is some solace for
the hard work that we have to do, that we are supposed to be a court of
a good deal of dignity and of a very high character. I hope you all
concur. [Laughter and applause.] Just consider what the jurisdiction of
that court is. There have come before that court often, States--States
which in the old ante-bellum times, we called "Sovereign States"--and
some of them did not come voluntarily. They were brought by the process
of that court. And when one State of the Union has a question of
juridical cognizance against another State of the Union, it must come to
that court. A subpoena is sent, and it is brought into that court just
like an individual, and it must, by the constitution of this country,
submit its rights and territorial jurisdiction, and the right which
accompanies that territorial jurisdiction, to the decision of that
Supreme Court. Except the great court which sat on Mount Olympus, I
know of no other which has ever had the right to decide, and compel
States to submit to its decision. [Applause.] It is within our province
to declare a law of one of these sovereign States, void, absolutely
null, because it may be in conflict with the Constitution and laws of
the United States; and that is a function of daily occurrence. What
other court in the world has that power? To what other court has ever
been submitted such a function as that--to declare the legislation of a
State like New York, with five millions of population, and other States
verging upon the same amount of population and wealth, to declare that
the laws which you have passed in the ordinary discharge of your powers
as legislators, are null and void?

It is a great power. We not only do that, but we decide that the laws
which the Congress of the United States shall pass are void, if they
conflict with that instrument under which we all live and move and have
our being. Though we approach these subjects with regretful hesitation,
it is a duty from which the court has never shrunk, and from which I
presume it never will shrink as long as that court has its existence.
[Applause.]

Gentlemen, I have told you about our high prerogatives; but just look at
what we have done! see