Exercises at the Ceremony of Unveiling the Statue of John Marshall, Chief Justice of the United States, in Front of the Capitol, Washington, May 10, 1884: With the Address of Mr. Chief Justice Waite, and the Oration of William Henry Rawle. With the Proceedings of the Philadelphia Bar Relating to the Monument to Chief Justice Marshall

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U.S. Government Printing Office, 1884 - Judges - 92 pages
 

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Page 60 - 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. If the former part of the alternative be true, then a legislative act contrary to the Constitution is not law ; if the latter part be true, then written constitutions are absurd attempts on the part of the people to limit a power in its own nature illimitable.
Page 59 - 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.
Page 74 - The judicial department," said he, " comes home in its effects to every man's fireside ; it passes on his property, his reputation, his life, his all. Is it not to the last degree important that he should be rendered perfectly and completely independent, with nothing to control him but God and his conscience...
Page 74 - The Judicial Department comes home in its effects to every man's fireside : it passes on his property, his reputation, his life, his all. Is it not, to the last degree important, that he should be rendered perfectly and completely independent, with nothing to influence or control him but God and his conscience?
Page 55 - as the British Constitution is the most subtle organism which has proceeded from progressive history, so the American Constitution is the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.
Page 9 - ... thee ; Grant that the ministers and stewards of thy mysteries may likewise so prepare and make ready thy way, by turning the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, that at thy second coming to judge the world we may be found an acceptable people in thy sight, who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
Page 74 - I have always thought, from my earliest youth until now, that the greatest scourge an angry Heaven ever inflicted upon an ungrateful and sinning people was an ignorant, a corrupt, or a dependent judiciary.
Page 71 - That a marble monument be erected by the United States in the Capitol, at the City of Washington ; and that the family of General WASHINGTON be requested to permit his body to be deposited under it; and that the monument be so designed as to commemorate the great events of his military and political life.
Page 44 - ... with Mr. Cabot, Mr. Ames, Mr. Dexter, and Mr. Sedgwick of Massachusetts, Mr. Wadsworth of Connecticut, and Mr. King of New York. I was delighted with these gentlemen. The particular subject (the British Treaty) which introduced me to their notice was at that time so interesting, and a Virginian who supported, with any sort of reputation, the measures of the government, was such a rara avis, that I was received by them all with a degree of kindness which I had not anticipated.
Page 67 - But if he have no choice in the case, if there be no alternative presented to him but a dereliction of duty or the opprobrium of those who are denominated the world, he merits the contempt as well as the indignation of his country who can hesitate which to embrace.

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