Life of James Buchanan, Fifteenth President of the United States. v. 1 (of 2)Curtis, George Ticknor
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Life of James Buchanan, Fifteenth President of the United States. v. 1 (of 2)
Curtis, George Ticknor
Buchanan, James, 1791-1868
The history of our country abundantly proves that individual States are
liable to high excitements and strong prejudices. The judges of these
States would be more or less than men if they did not participate in the
feelings of the community by which they are surrounded. Under the
influence of these excitements, individuals, whose rights happen to
clash with the prevailing feeling of the State, would have but a slender
hope of obtaining justice before a State tribunal. There would be the
power and the influence of the State sovereignty on the one side, and an
individual who had made himself obnoxious to popular odium on the other.
In such cases, ought the liberty or the property of a citizen, so far as
he claims the same under the Constitution or laws of the United States,
to be decided before a State court, without an appeal to the Supreme
Court of the United States, on whom the construction of this very
Constitution and these laws has been conferred, in all cases, by the
Constitution?
The Supreme Court, considering the elevated character of its judges, and
that they reside in parts of the Union remote from each other, can never
be liable to local excitements and local prejudices. To that tribunal
our citizens can appeal with safety and with confidence (as long as the
25th section of the judicial act shall remain upon the statute book)
whenever they consider that their rights, under the Constitution and
laws of the United States, have been violated by a State court. Besides,
should this section be repealed, it would produce a denial of equal
justice to parties drawing in question the Constitution, laws, or
treaties of the United States. In civil actions, the plaintiff might
then bring his action in a Federal or State court, as he pleased, and as
he thought he should be most likely to succeed; whilst the defendant
would have no option, but must abide the consequences without the power
of removing the cause from a State into a Federal court, except in the
single case of his being sued out of the district in which he resides;
and this, although he might have a conclusive defence under the
Constitution and laws of the United States.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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