CHAPTER I. The Establishment Of The National Judiciary

The monarch of ancient times mingled the functions of priest and
judge. It is therefore not altogether surprising that even today
a judicial system should be stamped with a certain resemblance to
an ecclesiastical hierarchy. If the Church of the Middle Ages was
"an army encamped on the soil of Christendom, with its outposts
everywhere, subject to the most efficient discipline, animated
with a common purpose, every soldier panoplied with inviolability
and armed with the tremendous weapons which slew the soul," the
same words, slightly varied, may be applied to the Federal
Judiciary created by the American Constitution. The Judiciary of
the United States, though numerically not a large body, reaches
through its process every part of the nation; its ascendancy is
primarily a moral one; it is kept in conformity with final
authority by the machinery of appeal; it is "animated with a
common purpose"; its members are "panoplied" with what is
practically a life tenure of their posts; and it is "armed with
the tremendous weapons" which slay legislation. And if the voice
of the Church was the voice of God, so the voice of the Court is
the voice of the American people as this is recorded in the
Constitution.

The Hildebrand of American constitutionalism is John Marshall.
The contest carried on by the greatest of the Chief Justices for
the principles today associated with his name is very like that
waged by the greatest of the Popes for the supremacy of the
Papacy. Both fought with intellectual weapons. Both addressed
their appeal to the minds and hearts of men. Both died before the