proceeding cannot be regarded as fully organized until the Chief
Justice is present. It is then first competent to prescribe the
rules to govern it during the progress of the cause. This was
the ruling of Chief Justice Chase on the impeachment of President
Johnson, which was tacitly acquiesced in by the Senate.

New York originally not only gave her legislature a share in
judicial power, but her judges a share in that of legislation.
Her Constitution of 1777 provided for a council of revision,
consisting of the Governor, the Chancellor, and the judges of the
Supreme Court, to whom all bills which passed the Senate and
Assembly should be presented for consideration; and that if a
majority of them should deem it improper that any such bill
should become a law they should within ten days return it with
their objections to the house in which it originated, which
should enter the objections at large in its minutes, and proceed
to reconsider the bill; and that it should not become a law
unless re-passed by a vote of two-thirds of the members of each
house. For forty years this remained the law, and the Council of
Revision contained from time to time judges of great ability,
Chancellor Kent being one. During this period 6,590 bills in all
were passed. One hundred and twenty-eight of them were returned
by the Council with their objections, and only seventeen of these
received the two-thirds vote necessary to re-enact
them.[Footnote: Poore, "Charters and Constitutions," II, 1332,
1333, note.]

An obvious objection to this method of legislation is that the
judges who, as members of a council of revision, find nothing
objectionable in a bill presented for their scrutiny, must