Thomas Jefferson (1820):
“To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions [is] a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men and not more so. They have with others the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps.”
This, from one of Mr. Jefferson's co-conspirators:
"However true, therefore, it may be, that the [federal] judicial department, is, in all questions submitted to it by the forms of the Constitution, to decide in the last resort, this resort must necessarily be deemed the last in relation to the authorities of the other [federal] departments of the government; not in relation to the rights of the [States as] parties to the constitutional compact, from which the judicial as well as the other departments hold their delegated trusts. On any other hypothesis, the delegation of judicial power would annul the authority delegating it; and the concurrence of this department with the others in usurped powers, might subvert for ever, and beyond the possible reach of any rightful remedy, the very Constitution which all were instituted to preserve...
"...if all the departments of government, including the [federal] judiciary (where the question is of a nature to be submitted to it,) combine to commit or to sanction, a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous violation of the Constitution, the states, as parties to the Constitution, may determine, in the last resort, whether the alleged violation has occurred, and may interpose to arrest the evil."
James Madison, Report of 1799
http://www.constitution.org/rf/vr_1799.htm
My, how things have changed - from a constitutional republic, to an elitist pentrarchy, in less than 200 years.
Personally, I agree with another of Mr. Jefferson's 'rabble-rousers:':
"As ends may be made to beget means, so means may be made to beget ends, until the cohabitation shall rear a progeny of unconstitutional bastards, which were not begotten by the people..."
John Taylor, 1820