Why has the Federal Supreme Court freely exercised the power to annul acts of Congress and at the same time refrained from exercising a like control over treaties? The Constitution makes no distinction between laws and treaties in this respect. It provides that "the judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States, and the treaties made, or which shall be made, under their authority."[101] If this provision is to be interpreted as conferring on the Federal courts the power to declare acts of Congress null and void, it also confers the same power in relation to treaties. Moreover, the Supreme Court has claimed, and has been conceded, the right to act as the guardian of the Constitution. The authority thus assumed by the Federal judiciary can be justified, if at all, only on the theory that the Constitution limits all governmental powers, and that it is the duty of the Supreme Court to enforce the limitations thus imposed by declaring null and void any unconstitutional exercise of governmental authority. Not only in the Constitution itself was no distinction made between laws and treaties in relation to the power of the judiciary, but the same is true of the Judiciary Act of September 24, 1789, which provided that where the highest court in a state in which a decision in the suit could be had decides against the validity of "a treaty or statute of, or an authority exercised under, the United States," such judgment or decree "may be re-examined, and reversed or affirmed in the Supreme Court [of the United States] on a writ of error." The right of the Federal Supreme Court to declare both laws and treaties null and void was thus clearly and unequivocally recognized in this act. The object here, however, was not to establish judicial control over treaties, but to deprive the state courts of all authority over them.