Posted on 02/17/2011 7:54:48 AM PST by Publius
Hamilton now takes a look at the issues of jurisdiction, and the differences between the Supreme Court and lower courts, while arguing that the states have nothing to fear.
1 To the People of the State of New York:
2 Let us now return to the partition of the judiciary authority between different courts and their relations to each other: “The judicial power of the United States is” – by the plan of the Convention – ”to be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may, from time to time, ordain and establish.” 1
3 That there ought to be one court of supreme and final jurisdiction is a proposition which is not likely to be contested.
4 The reasons for it have been assigned in another place and are too obvious to need repetition.
5 The only question that seems to have been raised concerning it is whether it ought to be a distinct body or a branch of the Legislature.
6 The same contradiction is observable in regard to this matter which has been remarked in several other cases.
7 The very men who object to the Senate as a court of impeachments on the ground of an improper intermixture of powers advocate, by implication at least, the propriety of vesting the ultimate decision of all causes in the whole or in a part of the Legislative body.
8 The arguments, or rather suggestions, upon which this charge is founded are to this effect.
9 “The authority of the proposed Supreme Court of the United States, which is to be a separate and independent body, will be superior to that of the Legislature.
10 The power of construing the laws according to the spirit of the Constitution will enable that court to mold them into whatever shape it may think proper, especially as its decisions will not be in any manner subject to the revision or correction of the Legislative body.
11 This is as unprecedented as it is dangerous.
12 In Britain, the judicial power, in the last resort, resides in the House of Lords, which is a branch of the legislature, and this part of the British government has been imitated in the state constitutions in general.
13 The Parliament of Great Britain and the legislatures of the several states can at any time rectify by law the exceptionable decisions of their respective courts.
14 But the errors and usurpations of the Supreme Court of the United States will be uncontrollable and remediless.”
15 This, upon examination, will be found to be made up altogether of false reasoning upon misconceived fact.
16 In the first place, there is not a syllable in the plan under consideration which directly empowers the national courts to construe the laws according to the spirit of the Constitution, or which gives them any greater latitude in this respect than may be claimed by the courts of every state.
17 I admit, however, that the Constitution ought to be the standard of construction for the laws, and that wherever there is an evident opposition, the laws ought to give place to the Constitution.
18 But this doctrine is not deducible from any circumstance peculiar to the plan of the Convention, but from the general theory of a limited Constitution, and as far as it is true, is equally applicable to most, if not to all, the state governments.
19 There can be no objection, therefore, on this account, to the Federal Judicature which will not lie against the local judicatures in general, and which will not serve to condemn every constitution that attempts to set bounds to legislative discretion.
20 But perhaps the force of the objection may be thought to consist in the particular organization of the Supreme Court, in its being composed of a distinct body of magistrates instead of being one of the branches of the Legislature as in the government of Great Britain and that of the state.
21 To insist upon this point, the authors of the objection must renounce the meaning they have labored to annex to the celebrated maxim requiring a separation of the departments of power.
22 It shall, nevertheless, be conceded to them agreeably to the interpretation given to that maxim in the course of these papers that it is not violated by vesting the ultimate power of judging in a part of the Legislative body.
23 But though this be not an absolute violation of that excellent rule, yet it verges so nearly upon it as on this account alone to be less eligible than the mode preferred by the Convention.
24 From a body which had even a partial agency in passing bad laws, we could rarely expect a disposition to temper and moderate them in the application.
25 The same spirit which had operated in making them would be too apt in interpreting them; still less could it be expected that men who had infringed the Constitution in the character of legislators would be disposed to repair the breach in the character of judges.
26 Nor is this all.
27 Every reason which recommends the tenure of good behavior for judicial offices militates against placing the judiciary power in the last resort in a body composed of men chosen for a limited period.
28 There is an absurdity in referring the determination of causes, in the first instance, to judges of permanent standing; in the last, to those of a temporary and mutable constitution.
29 And there is a still greater absurdity in subjecting the decisions of men, selected for their knowledge of the laws acquired by long and laborious study, to the revision and control of men who, for want of the same advantage, cannot but be deficient in that knowledge.
30 The members of the Legislature will rarely be chosen with a view to those qualifications which fit men for the stations of judges, and as on this account there will be great reason to apprehend all the ill consequences of defective information, so on account of the natural propensity of such bodies to party divisions there will be no less reason to fear that the pestilential breath of faction may poison the fountains of justice.
31 The habit of being continually marshaled on opposite sides will be too apt to stifle the voice both of law and of equity.
32 These considerations teach us to applaud the wisdom of those states who have committed the judicial power, in the last resort, not to a part of the legislature, but to distinct and independent bodies of men.
33 Contrary to the supposition of those who have represented the plan of the Convention in this respect as novel and unprecedented, it is but a copy of the constitutions of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, and the preference which has been given to those models is highly to be commended.
34 It is not true, in the second place, that the Parliament of Great Britain, or the legislatures of the particular states, can rectify the exceptionable decisions of their respective courts in any other sense than might be done by a future Legislature of the United States.
35 The theory, neither of the British nor the state constitutions, authorizes the revisal of a judicial sentence by a legislative act.
36 Nor is there any thing in the proposed Constitution more than in either of them by which it is forbidden.
37 In the former as well as in the latter, the impropriety of the thing on the general principles of law and reason is the sole obstacle.
38 A legislature, without exceeding its province, cannot reverse a determination once made in a particular case, though it may prescribe a new rule for future cases.
39 This is the principle, and it applies in all its consequences exactly in the same manner and extent to the state governments as to the national government now under consideration.
40 Not the least difference can be pointed out in any view of the subject.
41 It may in the last place be observed that the supposed danger of judiciary encroachments on the legislative authority, which has been upon many occasions reiterated, is in reality a phantom.
42 Particular misconstructions and contravention of the will of the Legislature may now and then happen, but they can never be so extensive as to amount to an inconvenience or in any sensible degree to affect the order of the political system.
43 This may be inferred with certainty from the general nature of the judicial power, from the objects to which it relates, from the manner in which it is exercised, from its comparative weakness, and from its total incapacity to support its usurpations by force.
44 And the inference is greatly fortified by the consideration of the important constitutional check which the power of instituting impeachments in one part of the Legislative body, and of determining upon them in the other, would give to that body upon the members of the Judicial department.
45 This is alone a complete security.
46 There never can be danger that the judges, by a series of deliberate usurpations on the authority of the Legislature, would hazard the united resentment of the body intrusted with it while this body was possessed of the means of punishing their presumption by degrading them from their stations.
47 While this ought to remove all apprehensions on the subject, it affords at the same time a cogent argument for constituting the Senate a court for the trial of impeachments.
48 Having now examined and, I trust, removed the objections to the distinct and independent organization of the Supreme Court, I proceed to consider the propriety of the power of constituting inferior courts 2 and the relations which will subsist between these and the former.
49 The power of constituting inferior courts is evidently calculated to obviate the necessity of having recourse to the Supreme Court in every case of federal cognizance.
50 It is intended to enable the national government to institute or authorize, in each state or district of the United States, a tribunal competent to the determination of matters of national jurisdiction within its limits.
51 But why, it is asked, might not the same purpose have been accomplished by the instrumentality of the state courts?
52 This admits of different answers.
53 Though the fitness and competency of those courts should be allowed in the utmost latitude, yet the substance of the power in question may still be regarded as a necessary part of the plan if it were only to empower the National Legislature to commit to them the cognizance of causes arising out of the national Constitution.
54 To confer the power of determining such causes upon the existing courts of the several states would perhaps be as much “to constitute tribunals” as to create new courts with the like power.
55 But ought not a more direct and explicit provision to have been made in favor of the state courts?
56 There are in my opinion substantial reasons against such a provision: the most discerning cannot foresee how far the prevalence of a local spirit may be found to disqualify the local tribunals for the jurisdiction of national causes, [while] every man may discover that courts constituted like those of some of the states would be improper channels of the judicial authority of the Union.
57 State judges, holding their offices during pleasure or from year to year, will be too little independent to be relied upon for an inflexible execution of the national laws.
58 And if there was a necessity for confiding the original cognizance of causes arising under those laws to them, there would be a correspondent necessity for leaving the door of appeal as wide as possible.
59 In proportion to the grounds of confidence in, or distrust of, the subordinate tribunals, ought to be the facility or difficulty of appeals.
60 And well satisfied as I am of the propriety of the appellate jurisdiction in the several classes of causes to which it is extended by the plan of the Convention.
61 I should consider everything calculated to give in practice an unrestrained course to appeals as a source of public and private inconvenience.
62 I am not sure but that it will be found highly expedient and useful to divide the United States into four or five or half a dozen districts, and to institute a federal court in each district in lieu of one in every state.
63 The judges of these courts, with the aid of the state judges, may hold circuits for the trial of causes in the several parts of the respective districts.
64 Justice through them may be administered with ease and dispatch, and appeals may be safely circumscribed within a narrow compass.
65 This plan appears to me at present the most eligible of any that could be adopted, and in order to it, it is necessary that the power of constituting inferior courts should exist in the full extent in which it is to be found in the proposed Constitution.
66 These reasons seem sufficient to satisfy a candid mind that the want of such a power would have been a great defect in the plan.
67 Let us now examine in what manner the judicial authority is to be distributed between the Supreme and the inferior courts of the Union.
68 The Supreme Court is to be invested with original jurisdiction only “in cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers, and consuls, and those in which a state shall be a party.”
69 Public ministers of every class are the immediate representatives of their sovereigns.
70 All questions in which they are concerned are so directly connected with the public peace that, as well for the preservation of this, as out of respect to the sovereignties they represent, it is both expedient and proper that such questions should be submitted in the first instance to the highest judicatory of the nation.
71 Though consuls have not in strictness a diplomatic character, yet as they are the public agents of the nations to which they belong, the same observation is in a great measure applicable to them.
72 In cases in which a state might happen to be a party, it would ill suit its dignity to be turned over to an inferior tribunal.
73 Though it may rather be a digression from the immediate subject of this paper, I shall take occasion to mention here a supposition which has excited some alarm upon very mistaken grounds.
74 It has been suggested that an assignment of the public securities of one state to the citizens of another would enable them to prosecute that state in the federal courts for the amount of those securities, a suggestion which the following considerations prove to be without foundation.
75 It is inherent in the nature of sovereignty not to be amenable to the suit of an individual without its consent.
76 This is the general sense and the general practice of mankind, and the exemption, as one of the attributes of sovereignty, is now enjoyed by the government of every state in the Union.
77 Unless, therefore, there is a surrender of this immunity in the plan of the Convention, it will remain with the states, and the danger intimated must be merely ideal.
78 The circumstances which are necessary to produce an alienation of state sovereignty were discussed in considering the article of taxation and need not be repeated here.
79 A recurrence to the principles there established will satisfy us that there is no color to pretend that the state governments would by the adoption of that plan be divested of the privilege of paying their own debts in their own way, free from every constraint but that which flows from the obligations of good faith.
80 The contracts between a nation and individuals are only binding on the conscience of the sovereign and have no pretensions to a compulsive force.
81 They confer no right of action independent of the sovereign will.
82 To what purpose would it be to authorize suits against states for the debts they owe?
83 How could recoveries be enforced?
84 It is evident it could not be done without waging war against the contracting state, and to ascribe to the federal courts by mere implication and in destruction of a preexisting right of the state governments a power which would involve such a consequence would be altogether forced and unwarrantable.
85 Let us resume the train of our observations.
86 We have seen that the original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court would be confined to two classes of causes and those of a nature rarely to occur.
87 In all other cases of federal cognizance, the original jurisdiction would appertain to the inferior tribunals, and the Supreme Court would have nothing more than an appellate jurisdiction, “with such exceptions and under such regulations as the Congress shall make.”
88 The propriety of this appellate jurisdiction has been scarcely called in question in regard to matters of law, but the clamors have been loud against it as applied to matters of fact.
89 Some well intentioned men in this state, deriving their notions from the language and forms which obtain in our courts, have been induced to consider it as an implied supersedure of the trial by jury in favor of the civil law mode of trial which prevails in our courts of admiralty, probate and chancery.
90 A technical sense has been affixed to the term “appellate,” which in our law parlance is commonly used in reference to appeals in the course of the civil law.
91 But if I am not misinformed, the same meaning would not be given to it in any part of New England.
92 There an appeal from one jury to another is familiar both in language and practice, and is even a matter of course until there have been two verdicts on one side.
93 The word “appellate,” therefore, will not be understood in the same sense in New England as in New York, which shows the impropriety of a technical interpretation derived from the jurisprudence of any particular state.
94 The expression, taken in the abstract, denotes nothing more than the power of one tribunal to review the proceedings of another, either as to the law or fact, or both.
95 The mode of doing it may depend on ancient custom or legislative provision – in a new government it must depend on the latter – and may be with or without the aid of a jury as may be judged advisable.
96 If, therefore, the reexamination of a fact once determined by a jury should in any case be admitted under the proposed Constitution, it may be so regulated as to be done by a second jury, either by remanding the cause to the court below for a second trial of the fact, or by directing an issue immediately out of the Supreme Court.
97 But it does not follow that the reexamination of a fact once ascertained by a jury will be permitted in the Supreme Court.
98 Why may not it be said with the strictest propriety when a writ of error is brought from an inferior to a superior court of law in this state, that the latter has jurisdiction of the fact as well as the law?
99 It is true it cannot institute a new inquiry concerning the fact, but it takes cognizance of it as it appears upon the record and pronounces the law arising upon it. 3
100 This is jurisdiction of both fact and law, nor is it even possible to separate them.
101 Though the common law courts of this state ascertain disputed facts by a jury, yet they unquestionably have jurisdiction of both fact and law, and accordingly when the former is agreed in the pleadings, they have no recourse to a jury but proceed at once to judgment.
102 I contend, therefore, on this ground that the expressions, “appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact,” do not necessarily imply a re-examination in the Supreme Court of facts decided by juries in the inferior courts.
103 The following train of ideas may well be imagined to have influenced the Convention in relation to this particular provision.
104 The appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, it may have been argued, will extend to causes determinable in different modes, some in the course of the common law, others in the course of the civil law.
105 In the former, the revision of the law only will be, generally speaking, the proper province of the Supreme Court; in the latter, the re-examination of the fact is agreeable to usage, and in some cases, of which prize causes are an example, might be essential to the preservation of the public peace.
106 It is therefore necessary that the appellate jurisdiction should in certain cases extend in the broadest sense to matters of fact.
107 It will not answer to make an express exception of cases which shall have been originally tried by a jury because in the courts of some of the states, all causes are tried in this mode 4, and such an exception would preclude the revision of matters of fact, as well where it might be proper, as where it might be improper.
108 To avoid all inconveniences, it will be safest to declare generally that the Supreme Court shall possess appellate jurisdiction both as to law and fact, and that this jurisdiction shall be subject to such exceptions and regulations as the National Legislature may prescribe.
109 This will enable the government to modify it in such a manner as will best answer the ends of public justice and security.
110 This view of the matter, at any rate, puts it out of all doubt that the supposed abolition of the trial by jury by the operation of this provision is fallacious and untrue.
111 The Legislature of the United States would certainly have full power to provide that in appeals to the Supreme Court there should be no re-examination of facts where they had been tried in the original causes by juries.
112 This would certainly be an authorized exception, but if, for the reason already intimated, it should be thought too extensive, it might be qualified with a limitation to such causes only as are determinable at common law in that mode of trial.
113 The amount of the observations hitherto made on the authority of the Judicial department is this:
[1] Article III, Section 1.
[2] This power has been absurdly represented as intended to abolish all the county courts in the several states, which are commonly called inferior courts. But the expressions of the Constitution are to constitute “tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court”, and the evident design of the provision is to enable the institution of local courts, subordinate to the Supreme, either in states or larger districts. It is ridiculous to imagine that county courts were in contemplation.
[3] This word is composed of jus and dictio, juris dictio, or a speaking and pronouncing of the law.
[4] I hold that the states will have concurrent jurisdiction with the subordinate federal judicatories in many cases of federal cognizance, as will be explained in my next paper.
Hamilton’s Critique
This is a rather technical piece, in essence an argument among attorneys as to how jurisdiction is to be established under the new government and whether the fears of certain anti-Federalist attorneys are justified on that topic. Difficulties in understanding the ebb and flow of argument are exacerbated by the fact that the conventions of the time allowed the disputants to remain unidentified, forcing the modern reader to attempt to comprehend the opposition’s argument strictly through statement by its own opponent.
On the one hand there is Hamilton, identified by his own admission of authorship; on the other, merely an abstract argument that was stated in one form or another by several anti-Federalists, notably DeWitt, Bryan, and the individual, probably Robert Yates, who wrote under the pseudonym Brutus. The reader is, therefore, left without the ability to analyze the arguments quoted by Hamilton in this piece against what any specific opponent actually said.
It is, in addition, a topic which frankly only an attorney could love: the form and structure of the Federal Judiciary and how it compared to existing legal systems within the states and to the standard of the world at the time, that of the judiciary of Great Britain.
Hamilton begins with the premise that some form of “supreme and final jurisdiction” is essentially beyond debate, “not likely to be contested,” (3), which in fact it was not, at least directly. As with taxation, the fears of the anti-Federalists were that a structure of this power at the federal level must inevitably devour the jealously guarded prerogatives of the states. Certain language within the proposed Constitution led to that conclusion, and it is Hamilton’s task to characterize the fear as a misinterpretation.
One structural issue stemmed from the old difficulty of the balance between separation of powers and the checks and balances built into the system between Legislative and Judiciary. Hamilton’s opponents had suggested that the Supreme Court should itself have an oversight not written into the Constitution, such as the British had, either from a committee of review in one form or another, or by placing that review into the hands of all, or part, of Congress. The alternative was a Supreme Court altogether uncontrolled, claimed the anti-Federalists, especially Brutus in his #11. Hamilton summarizes their arguments between 8 and 14, and sets to work to examine each of them.
First, although there is “not a syllable in the plan” that would lead the Supreme Court to examine legislation “according to the spirit of the Constitution,” Hamilton allows that it is, in fact, implied and is precisely what they ought to do (17).
Should it be a distinct body instead of a subsidiary of Congress? Hamilton states that the latter position violates the very doctrine of separation of powers that has led the anti-Federalists to object to the placement of the process of impeachment into the hands of, sequentially, the House and the Senate. He concedes that placement of the power of judicial review in the hands of only part of the Senate might not be as egregious a violation of principle, yet still is objectionably close (23). It would lead to a danger of conflict of interest between those passing the laws and those judging them (24), and it would place the duties that Hamilton has already described as requiring the security of tenure into the hands of men who would have none (27). It would, as well, negate the advantages of learning and long study of the law by placing its review in the hands of men who would have neither (29). Finally, and worse:
30 ...on account of the natural propensity of such bodies to party divisions there will be no less reason to fear that the pestilential breath of faction may poison the fountains of justice.
This was a prophetic statement, upheld by the spectacle of the intensely partisan process of the naming of new judges to the Supreme Court that has evolved over the ensuing years. But Hamilton would live to see an even more startling example of political faction’s effect on the Supreme Court, for in the first exchange between political parties of the supreme executive power involving Adams and Jefferson, the forces of faction would:
All of this was within fifteen years of Hamilton’s warning.
Hamilton repeats an earlier point: that the structure of the Judiciary within the proposed Constitution is not in the least unprecedented, but in fact mirrored the existing practices of nine of the thirteen states (33). Nor is the proposed legislative review different in principle from that of Great Britain – both, says Hamilton, will follow the same practice and encounter the same limitation.
38 A legislature, without exceeding its province, cannot reverse a determination once made in a particular case, though it may prescribe a new rule for future cases.
Finally, Hamilton states that the idea that the Judiciary must necessarily encroach unhindered on the powers of the Legislative is simply not the case. For one thing, the Legislative may impeach members of the Judiciary should they make the attempt (44), and for another, although matters of original jurisdiction are spelled out in the Constitution, the control of appellate jurisdiction is in the hands of Congress (68). He proceeds to develop both themes. History, however, would have her own ideas.
The issue of impeachment would arise early in the process of the formation of subsidiary courts through the short-lived Judiciary Act of 1801, known popularly as the Midnight Judges Act, in which outgoing President John Adams attempted both to form those courts and to populate them with Federalist judges prior to the Republican takeover under Jefferson. Ironically, Jefferson’s accession to office was the result of Hamilton’s own action in preferring him to Aaron Burr for the Presidency. Apart from the later and famous Burr-Hamilton duel, this decision reverberated throughout the subsequent history of the judiciary.
That year, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase, a gentleman of sterling past who was one of the signatories to the Declaration of Independence and a nominee of Washington himself, objected strenuously and publicly to what he felt was Jefferson’s usurpation of power within the Judiciary, so much so that Jefferson recommended that he be forcibly removed through impeachment. Impeached he was, and he was subsequently acquitted of all charges in the Senate as well. This was the only case to date under which a sitting Supreme Court justice was so treated.
Another interesting thing happened as a consequence of Adams’ action with respect to the appointment of federal judges. Jefferson’s incoming Secretary of State James Madison declined to confirm one of them, a Federalist named William Marbury, who subsequently sued under the previous Judiciary Act of 1789, under which it was stated that the Court could force the Executive to seat him. This was the famous Marbury v. Madison case, in whose judgment Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that the Act of 1789 was unconstitutional and that the Court did not have the right to force the Executive to seat Marbury. On the face of it, the decision was to limit the powers of the Supreme Court; in fact, however, it established the ability of the Supreme Court to declare legislation unconstitutional. The implied power of judicial review now had a legal precedent.
This astonishing series of events was still more than a decade in the future, but its foundations were being laid by actors with very familiar names who would soon find themselves sitting in the highest offices of the government they were attempting to shape, not always in the roles they now imagined nor under the precepts they were now espousing.
Hamilton returns to the discussion of original jurisdiction briefly in pointing out that it is only conferred to the Supreme Court for a very limited class of cases (68), the rest being distributed to such inferior courts as are yet to be established. The consequences of this are clear: as soon as the Supreme Court’s role is that of an appellate court under Article III, Section 2, those are “under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.” (87)
To the objection that the Constitution will threaten state sovereignty by allowing individual citizens to sue them on an equal basis, Hamilton replies that such an event will only be possible through the consent of the state in question (75), and that this immunity was intended by the Constitutional Convention (77). Moreover, the Supreme Court would have no means, short of war, of enforcing its decisions in the case of states being sued for existing debt (82, 84).
To the objection that the Constitution implies that trial by jury is to be discarded in civil cases, Hamilton states that this is a misconception fueled by the local interpretation of the language involved, an interpretation that is not universal enough to be a danger; the same is true of the notion that the term “appellate” will necessarily be construed to imply a reconsideration of a previous jury’s findings both on matters of fact and on matters of law (97, 102). The key word is “necessarily,” for in fact:
108 To avoid all inconveniences, it will be safest to declare generally that the Supreme Court shall possess appellate jurisdiction both as to law and fact, and that this jurisdiction shall be subject to such exceptions and regulations as the National Legislature may prescribe.
Here once more, Hamilton insists that despite the fact that the membership of Legislative and Judicial are to be exclusive, the former is empowered to act as a brake on the latter. In fact, Hamilton leaves it up to the Legislative to decide whether the Supreme Court will be able to find on the basis of fact as well as law (111). Here the key word is “generally”. The reader struggling to follow this convoluted chain of thought may be forgiven a temptation to shriek imprecations at such lawyerly equivocation.
At last, at 113, there is a more or less coherent summation.
113 The amount of the observations hitherto made on the authority of the Judicial department is this:
Despite Hamilton’s insistence that he has completely addressed it, the first point remains very much a matter of opinion. The second point is in the Constitution itself; the third point is utterly meaningless, relegating the power of decision to Congress; the fourth point is upheld by subsequent history; the fifth point is an appeal to common sense that even in Hamilton’s day must have constituted the triumph of hope over experience. The fellow who had been doing his utmost to deride the capabilities of elected officials to oversee non-elected officials was now depending on their abilities to do precisely that. It is an argument better suited to the newspapers than to a courtroom.
Discussion Topics
Not to mince words but to “deny power”???
I always thought that the brances of government were to balance each other and not circumvent, or have more sway (power) in the process as a whole...
Just my opinion...Remember. somewhere we lost the ability to control our government somewhere along the way, where the Constitution and its parameters were specifically designed to “limit” the government and its duties, and not the other way around...
And we do not have all the ingredients (in this day and age)to bake that big “humble” pie that this government needs to consume right now...
Anyway, thanks to briother Bigun for giving me the steer to this group and its discussions...
Is there a “ping” list I can be added to???
BTW, when you said: “The powers are enumerated and yes, there is no provision for any branch to unilaterally create more powers.”
You are absolutely right, but apparently they (government, all branches) apparently didn’t get this memo, and no one has had the ability to call them on this...So that is why we are in the pickle we are in these days...
We know what is broken, we just do not have the pieces in place to correct it (fix it)...
Forgive me, I do have some catching up to do, to absorb and get into the discussion here and be on the same page with this group...
These certainly are the kind of discussions I enjoy on this website...
Regards...
Just ask the fellow who posted this thread to add you to the ping list and {{{POOF}}}} it will be done!
Welcome aboard Stevie!
Ah yes, Newt to U of GA Law School. Great lectures. Newt stands second to no living historian. The Scotus is supreme among courts, not supreme among the three branches.
My point is that the court has the legitimate power of judicial review.
I suppose then that we are in agreement after all.
Sounds good to me!
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