delegating it?[1] Since the whole people of the United States have concurred in establishing the constitution, it would seem most consonant with reason to presume, in the absence of all contrary stipulations, that they did not mean, that its obligatory force should depend upon the dictate or opinion of any single state. Even under the confederation, (as has been already stated,) it was unanimously resolved by congress, that "as state legislatures are not competent to the making of such compacts or treaties, [with foreign states,] so neither are they competent in that capacity authoritatively to decide on, or ascertain the construction and sense of them." And the reasoning, by which this opinion is supported, seems absolutely unanswerable.[2] If this was true under such an instrument, and that construction was avowed before the whole American people, and brought home to the knowledge of the state legislatures, how can we avoid the inference, that under the constitution, where an express judicial power in cases arising under the constitution was provided for, the people must have understood and intended, that the states should have no right to question, or control such judicial interpretation?
§ 383. In the next place, as the judicial power extends to all cases arising under the constitution, and that constitution is declared to be the supreme law, that supremacy would naturally be construed to ex-- ↑ There is vast force in the reasoning of Mr. Webster on this subject, in his great speech on Mr. Foot's Resolutions in the senate, in 1830, which well deserves the attention of every statesman and jurist. See 4 Elliot's Debates, 338, 339, 343, 344, and Webster's Speeches, p. 407, 408, 418, 419, 420; Id. 430, 431, 432.
- ↑ Journals of Congress, April 13, 1787, p. 32. &c. Rawle on the Constitution, App. 2, p. 310, &c.
