FReeper Book Club: The Debate over the Constitution, Brutus #11

A Publius/Billthedrill Essay | 7 September 2010 | Publius & Billthedrill

[Loud Mime]

42 The Legislature must be controlled by the Constitution and not the Constitution by them

Bingo! That is the problem! No matter what system one uses, things will work out for the better if the correct minds take the seats. The debate on this matter is if one system of selection is better than another, or if one system has fatal flaws and another living grace. It is unending.

Reading the posts on this thread takes me back to the first Federalist.

The power to judge has to be given to one area of government. Some faction is going to get/take that power......as power abhors a vacuum.

I think if the critics were to be appointed as the judges, they would have no argument with the system that delivered their seats of power, even if they paid cash money for them.

[Billthedrill]

You’re going to love the next one. :-)

[Loud Mime]

If you’re talking about the next president, I won’t bet against your assertion. ;^)

[Jacquerie]

The solution is to ditch Article 3.

[Bigun]

"The Federal Government is the creature of the States. It is not a party to the Constitution, but the result of it the creation of that agreement which was made by the States as parties. It is a mere agent, entrusted with limited powers for certain specific objects; which powers and objects are enumerated in the Constitution. Shall the agent be permitted to judge the extent of its own powers, without reference to his constituent? To a certain extent, he is compelled to do this, in the very act of exercising them, but always in subordination to the authority by whom his powers were conferred. If this were not so, the result would be, that the agent would possess every power which the agent could confer, notwithstanding the plainest and most express terms of the grant. This would be against all principle and all reason. If such a rule would prevail in regard to government, a written constitution would be the idlest thing imaginable. It would afford no barrier against the usurpations of the government, and no security for the rights and liberties of the people. If then the Federal Government has no authority to judge, in the last resort, of the extent of its own powers, with what propriety can it be said that a single department of that government may do so? Nay. It is said that this department may not only judge for itself, but for the other departments also. This is an absurdity as pernicious as it is gross and palpable. If the judiciary may determine the powers of the Federal Government, it may pronounce them either less or more than they really are. "

Abel Upshur Secretary of the Navy 1841-43