Magna Carta, and Other AddressesGuthrie, William D. (William Dameron)
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Magna Carta, and Other Addresses
Guthrie, William D. (William Dameron)
Constitutional law -- United States
Others again would deny to the courts the power and duty to declare
unconstitutional and void any enactment of a legislative body that was
in conflict with the constitution, or, if not going quite so far,
would give the courts power to disregard constitutional limitations
whenever the judges found or fancied that an enactment was in
consonance with prevailing morality or the opinion of the majority in
respect of matters relating to the police power or social progress or
social justice. They would have the judiciary interpret and enforce a
constitution not according to the mandate of the people who adopted it,
nor according to the true meaning and intent of the language employed
by the framers, nor according to settled general rules and principles,
but according to the ever-changing desires or notions or opinions
of the majority and the personal ideas of so-called progressive or
sympathetic judges. Many of those who charge the judiciary with having
usurped the power to determine whether a particular enactment does or
does not conflict with the fundamental and supreme law as established
by the people themselves, would now place a far greater power in
the hands of the courts by authorizing them to expand or contract a
constitution by judicial construction, and would thus in reality vest
in the judges an arbitrary discretion. Under this doctrine, practically
every constitutional restraint could be readily circumvented,
perverted, or nullified; constitutional rights could be frittered away,
and great landmarks of human progress could be undermined.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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