any State, with reference to the Constitution, to acts of
Congress, or to treaties of the United States. Nor can there be
much doubt that the members of the Convention were also
substantially agreed that the Supreme Court was endowed with the
further right to pass upon the constitutionality of acts of
Congress. The available evidence strictly contemporaneous with
the framing and ratification of the Constitution shows us
seventeen of the fifty-five members of the Convention asserting
the existence of this prerogative in unmistakable terms and only
three using language that can be construed to the contrary. More
striking than that, however, is the fact that these seventeen
names include fully three-fourths of the leaders of the
Convention, four of the five members of the Committee of Detail
which drafted the Constitution, and four of the five members of
the Committee of Style which gave the Constitution its final
form. And these were precisely the members who expressed
themselves on all the interesting and vital subjects before the
Convention, because they were its statesmen and articulate
members.*

* The entries under the names of these members in the Index to
Max Farrand's "Records of the Federal Convention" occupy fully
thirty columns, as compared with fewer than half as many columns
under the names of all remaining members.


No part of the Constitution has realized the hopes of its framers
more brilliantly than has Article III, where the judicial power
of the United States is defined and organized, and no part has
shown itself to be more adaptable to the developing needs of a