will ultimately be given a still more independent and influential position. The essence of judicial power consists not in judging, but in laying down the law, or, according to the Roman expression, not _in judicio_, but _in jure_. The purity of justice, the liberty of the citizens, have gained by the change, and government has not lost in security. Judicial power should be removed as far as possible from all warping influence. It should be the great defender of established order against the legislative and executive departments of government. Its relation to the law-making and the law-executing powers is peculiarly delicate and important. There is need that some other power, not political, removed from the struggles of the present, having no ends of its own to answer in the future, should have the function to decide what is the meaning and application of a law; and whether there is any positive conflict between a new one and a received one, or between a new one and a constitution. This should be a power able to watch over the constitution, and prevent invasions of it. The highest court can exercise this guardianship better than any other board of control that can be devised. The power of the judiciary, under certain conditions, to pronounce upon the constitutionality of the laws is “a security to the justice of the state against its power.”[44] The supreme power of the court becomes the servant of the federative principle, which as a mediator between opposing forces is pre-eminently a principle of justice. The decision is now national, now in favor of the state, and thus, through interpretation, the constitution is developed, and the two forces have as free play in the judicial as in the more strictly political action.