supreme authority. It may be that of one man or of many men.
The essential thing is that it should be a personal utterance,
proceeding from persons to whom, by acknowledged law or custom,
submission is due, and one that, if need be, can be enforced by
the whole power of the State.

The fundamental principle of American government, as laid down in
the words of Harrington in the oldest of our State Constitutions,
after which many of the rest, and that of the United States as
well, have been largely patterned, is that it is one of "laws and
not of men."[Footnote: Constitution of Massachusetts, Part the
First, Art. XXX, quoted more fully in Chapter II.] Laws,
however, must be administered by men. Their meaning, if it be
uncertain, must be determined by men. It must be the subject, as
the same Constitution twice affirms, of "impartial
interpretation."[Footnote: _Id_., Preamble, and Part the
First, Art. XXIX.] This interpretation is really what gives them
force. It is the personal utterance of one speaking for the
State, and who speaks the last word. It was simply following
English precedent to give this power to the courts as respects
legislative enactments. But the principle which required it
inevitably extended with equal force to constitutional
provisions. The people who adopt written constitutions for their
government put their work in a form which must often give rise to
questions as to what they intended to express. They rely on the
judiciary to secure their enforcement, and the judiciary must
enforce them according to what it understands their meaning to
be.

There is but a step from interpretation to enlargement. Every