The people of the United States, in adopting the Constitution, made _one_ standard, _one_ fundamental law, and _only one_. They gave to the government of the United States certain powers. They restricted it as to others. They placed certain prohibitions on the States. The Constitution was to be the one fundamental law of the land, to which all, as well States as people, should submit. Art. 6, sec. 2, provides that the "Constitution and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be _the supreme law of the land_; and the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any thing in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding."
Who now is to tell us what this one standard is, to which all must submit, and which is thus to override all State Constitutions and all State laws? Is it the province of each individual to do it? Then we may have at this moment seventeen million different interpretations, and hence as many different Constitutions, each of which, however, is the supreme law of the land! Are the executive or judicial departments of the States the proper expounders? Then, at this moment, we may have only thirty different interpretations, twenty-nine of which must be wrong, because the supreme law can be but one.
In order, therefore, that the end of the Constitution may be accomplished, that it may really be the supreme law of the land, it must have provided a way in which its only true meaning may be ascertained and definitively settled. Unless it has provided a final interpreter of its meaning, it is the merest folly to style it the supreme law of the land, or to call on us to obey its requirement. Is the Constitution thus deficient? Does it demand uniformity, and at the same time deny the use of those means which are absolutely necessary to produce such uniformity? Does it present a variable, ever-changing standard of duty, and yet demand complete uniformity in practice?
There are three departments in the Government, namely, the Executive, the Legislative, and the Judicial. The first two of these are each, to some extent, supreme in its own sphere; and its acts are incapable of revision elsewhere. "Thus, in measures exclusively of a political, legislative, or executive character, it is plain, that, as the supreme authority as to these questions belongs to the legislative and executive departments, they cannot be re-examined elsewhere. Thus, Congress having the power to declare war, to levy taxes, to appropriate money, to regulate intercourse and commerce with foreign nations, their mode of executing these powers can never become the subject of re-examination in any other tribunal. So, the power to make treaties being confided to the President and Senate, when a treaty is properly ratified, it becomes the law of the land, and no other tribunal can gainsay its stipulations. Yet cases may readily be imagined, in which a tax may be laid, or a treaty made, upon motions and grounds wholly beside the intention of the Constitution. The remedy, however, in such cases is solely by an appeal to the people at the elections, or by the salutary power of amendment provided by the Constitution itself.