Replies

I'm having to guess at your point. I believe your saying that because the judicial branch has no direct means of enforcing its interpretations, it therefore has no power to make its interpretations binding. I disagree, and I don't think Hamilton would agree either. It is of course true in some abstract sense that the power of the courts extends only so far as people's willingness to obey them, but the same can be said of the law itself.

The Founders intended for the political branches of government to be subject to the law - i.e., the Constitution - and as well intended for the judiciary to declare the meaning of that law. If the political branches contemn the courts on such matters, they are in effect announcing that they are behaving outside the law, and that they recognize no restraints upon their discretion. This defeats the whole purpose of having a written Constitution.

From POST #1 - If one has trouble imagining judicial review so confined in its scope, it is probably because the modern American mind, conditioned by at least a half-century of judicial supremacy, can hardly help but regard the judicial branch as a co-equal partner in the public policy making process.

The Founders intended for the political branches of government to be subject to the law - i.e., the Constitution - and as well intended for the judiciary to declare the meaning of that law. If the political branches contemn the courts on such matters, they are in effect announcing that they are behaving outside the law, and that they recognize no restraints upon their discretion. This defeats the whole purpose of having a written Constitution.
-inquest-

Exactly. -- Just as Marshall said in M v M:

"The question, whether an act, repugnant to the constitution, can become the law of the land, is a question deeply interesting to the United States; but happily, not of an intricacy proportioned to its interest. It seems only necessary to recognize certain principles, supposed to have been long and well established, to decide it.
That the people have an original right to establish, for their future govern-ment, such principles as, in their opinion, shall most conduce to their own happiness, is the basis on which the whole American fabric has been erected. The exercise of this original right is a very great exertion; nor can it, nor ought it, to be frequently repeated. The principles, therefore, so established, are deemed fundamental. And as the authority from which they proceed is supreme, and can seldom act, they are designed to be permanent.

This original and supreme will organizes the government, and assigns to different departments their respective powers. It may either stop here, or establish certain limits not to be transcended by those departments.
The government of the United States is of the latter description. The powers of the legislature are defined and limited; and that those limits may not be mistaken, or forgotten, the constitution is written. To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation 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, 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."
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Wise man, - at this point.

30 years later, in Barron v Baltimore he damn near destroyed the union by 'ruling' that states were not bound by the BOR's.
- Figure that reversal of character.