disparagement of State Rights.

Even more important than the relation of the Supreme Court to the
judicial systems of the States was the question of its relation
to the Constitution as a governing instrument. Though the idea
that courts were entitled to pronounce on the constitutionality
of legislative acts had received countenance in a few dicta in
some of the States and perhaps in one or two decisions, this idea
was still at best in 1787 but the germ of a possible institution.
It is not surprising, therefore, that no such doctrine found
place in the resolutions of the Virginia plan which came before
the Convention. By the sixth resolution of this plan the national
legislature was to have the power of negativing all state laws
which, in its opinion, contravened "the Articles of Union, or any
treaty subsisting under the authority of the Union," and by the
eighth resolution "a convenient number of the national judiciary"
were to be associated with the Executive, "with authority to
examine every act of the national legislature before it shall
operate, and every act of a particular legislature before a
negative thereon shall be final" and to impose a qualified veto
in either case.

But, as discussion in the Convention proceeded, three principles
obtained clearer and clearer recognition, if not from all its
members, certainly from the great majority of them: first, that
the Constitution is law, in the sense of being enforcible by
courts; secondly, that it is supreme law, with which ordinary
legislation must be in harmony to be valid; and thirdly--a
principle deducible from the doctrine of the separation of
powers--that, while the function of making new law belongs to the