The provision in the Constitution of the United States for the life tenure of a non-elective judiciary serves, however, an altogether different purpose. It was designed as a check, not upon an irresponsible executive as was the case in England, but upon the people themselves. Its aim was not to increase, but to diminish popular control over the government. Hence, though professing to follow the English model, the framers of the Constitution as a matter of fact rejected it. They not only gave the Federal judges a life tenure, but made that tenure unqualified and absolute, the power which Parliament had to demand the removal of judges being carefully witheld from the American Congress. This reversed the relation which existed between the legislative and judicial branches of government under the English system and raised the judiciary from a dependent and subordinate position to one that made it in many respects supreme. The most important attribute of sovereignty, that of interpreting the Constitution for the purposes of law-making, which belonged to Parliament as a matter of course, was withheld from Congress and conferred upon the Federal judiciary. Not only, then, did the framers of the Constitution depart from the English model in making the Federal judiciary independent of Congress, but they went much farther than this and conferred upon the body whose independence and irresponsibility were thus secured, powers which under the English system were regarded as the exclusive prerogative of a responsible Parliament. This made our Supreme judges, though indirectly appointed, holding office for life and therefore independent of the people, the final interpreters of the Constitution, with power to enforce their interpretation by declaring legislation null and void. A more powerful check upon democratic innovation it would be hard to devise.