Our Changing Constitution by Charles Wheeler Pierson
page 60 of 147 (40%)
page 60 of 147 (40%)
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side of national supremacy and authority.
[Footnote 1: 2 Dallas, 419, decided in 1793.] [Footnote 2: Amendment XI.] Three years later the Court again took occasion to assert the national supremacy in no uncertain fashion. The case was _Ware v. Hylton_[1] and the Court laid down the proposition that a treaty of the Federal Government (in this case the treaty of peace with Great Britain) nullified previous state laws dealing with the subject matter. It is an interesting circumstance that one of the counsel on the losing side in this case was John Marshall of Virginia, and that this was the only case he ever argued before the tribunal through which he was destined to play so momentous a part in history. [Footnote 1: 3 Dallas, 199, decided in 1796.] In the annals of the Supreme Court and the development of American constitutional law the name of John Marshall stands preƫminent. He was appointed Chief Justice by President John Adams, and took his seat on the Bench at the beginning of the new century (February 4, 1801). He was without judicial experience, but his record in other fields of activity and his well-known Federalist principles pointed him out as a man to be reckoned with and explain the aversion with which he was viewed by Thomas Jefferson, the incoming President. The breach between the President and the Chief Justice was widened by some of the early decisions of the latter upholding the supremacy of the National Government and the powers of the Supreme Court, notably the famous case of _Marbury v. Madison_,[1] in which was asserted the power of the Court |
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