The introduction, therefore, of a judicial department into the new plan of government, of itself evinces an intention to clothe that government with powers that could be executed peacefully, and without the necessity of putting down the organized opposition of subordinate communities. By their resort to this great instrumentality, we may perceive how much, in this particular, the framers of the Constitution were aided by the spirit and forms of the institutions which the people of these States had already framed for their separate governments. The common law, which the founders of all these States had brought with them to this country, had accustomed them to regard the judiciary as clothed with functions in which two important objects were embraced. By the known course of that jurisprudence the judiciary is, in the first place, the department which declares the construction of the laws; and, in the second place, when that department has announced the construction of a law, it is not only the particular case that is settled, but the rule is promulgated that is to determine all future cases of the same kind arising under the same law. Thus the judiciary, in governments whose adjudications proceed upon the course of the common law, becomes not merely the arbitrator in a particular controversy, but the department through which the government interprets the rule of action prescribed by the legislature, and by which all its citizens are to be guided. This office of the judicial department had long been known in all the States of the Union at the time of the formation of the national Constitution. By the introduction of this department into their plan of government, the framers of the Constitution obviously intended that it should perform the same office in their national system which the corresponding department had always fulfilled in the States. No other function of a judiciary was known to the people of the United States, and this function was both known and deemed essential to a well-regulated liberty. It was known that the judicial department of a government is that branch by which the meaning of its laws is ascertained, and applied to the conduct of individuals. To effect this, it was introduced into the system whose gradual formation and development we are now examining.