But though the national judiciary may be deemed preeminent in the weight of its influence, the authority of its decisions, and in the attraction of their materials, there are abundant considerations to cheer and animate us in the cultivation of our own local law. The judicial power of the United States is necessarily limited to national objects. The vast field of the law of property, the very extensive head of equity jurisdiction, and the principal rights and duties which flow from our civil and domestic relations, fall within the control, and we might almost say the exclusive cognizance, of the state governments. We look essentially to the state courts for protection to all these momentous interests. They touch, in their operation, every chord of human sympathy, and control our best destinies. It is their province to reward, and to punish. Their blessings and their terrors will accompany us to the fireside, and "be in constant activity before the public eye." The elementary principles of the common law are the same in every state, and equally enlighten and invigorate every part of our country. Our municipal codes can be made to advance with equal steps with that of the nation, in discipline, in wisdom, and in lustre, if the state governments (as they ought in all honest policy) will only render equal patronage and security to the administration of justice. The true interests and the permanent freedom of this country require, that the jurisprudence of the individual states should be cultivated, cherished and exalted, and the dignity and reputation of the state authorities sustained with becoming *pride. In their subordinate relation *446 to the United States, they should endeavour to discharge the duty which they owe to the latter, without forgetting the respect which they owe to themselves. In the appropriate language of Sir William Blackstone, and which he applied to the people of his own country, they should be "loyal, yet free; obedient, and yet independent.'

PART III.

OF THE VARIOUS SOURCES OF THE MUNICIPAL LAW OF THE SEVERAL STATES.

LECTURE XX.

OF STATUTE LAW.

MUNICIPAL LAW is a rule of civil conduct, prescribed by the supreme power of a state. Municipal law, or the jus civile, is thus explained in the Institutes of Justinian. Quod quisque populus sibi jus constituit id ipsius proprium civitatis est, et vocatur jus civile, quasi proprium ipsius civitatis. This definition is less precise and scientific than that given by Sir William Blackstone. Municipal law is composed of written and unwritten, or of statute and common law. Statute law is the express written will of the legislature, rendered authentic by certain prescribed forms and solemnities.

It is a principle in the English law, that an act of parliament, delivered in clear and intelligible terms, cannot be questioned, or its authority controlled, in any court of justice. "It is," says Sir William Blackstone, "the exercise of the highest authority that the kingdom acknowledges upon earth." When it is said in the books, that a statute contrary to natural equity and reason, or repugnant, or impossible to be performed, is void, the cases are understood to mean, that the courts are to give the statute a reasonable construction. They will not readily presume, out of respect and duty to the lawgiver, that any very unjust or absurd consequence was within the contemplation of the law. But if it should happen to be too palpable in its direction to admit of but one construction,

pugnant to

tion void.

there is no doubt in the English law as to the binding *448 *efficacy of the statute. The will of the legislature is the supreme law of the land, and demands perfect obedience.a

But while we admit this conclusion of the English law, we cannot but admire the intrepidity and powerful sense of justice which led Lord Coke, when chief justice of the K. B., to declare, as he did in Doctor Bonham's case,b that the common law doth control acts of parliament, and adjudges them void, when against common right and reason. The same sense of justice and freedom of opinion led Lord Chief Justice Hobart, in Day v. Savage, to insist that an act of parliament, made against natural equity, as to make a man judge in his own case, was void; and induced Lord Chief Justice Holt to say, in the case of the City of London v. Wood, that the observation of Lord Coke was not extravagant, but was a very reasonable and true saying. Perhaps what Lord Coke said in his reports on this point, may have been one of the many things that King James alluded to, when he said, that in Coke's Reports there were many dangerous conceits of his own uttered for law, to the prejudice of the crown, parliament and subjects.e

Laws re- The principle in the English government, that the parliathe constitu- ment is omnipotent, does not prevail in the United States; though, if there be no constitutional objection to a statute, it is with us as absolute and uncontrollable as laws flowing from the sovereign power, under any other form of government. But in this, and all other countries where there is a written constitution, designating the powers and duties of the legislative, as well as of the other departments of the govern

ment, an act of the legislature may be void as being *449 against the constitution. *The law with us must conform, in the first place, to the constitution of the United States, and then to the subordinate constitution of its particular state, and if it infringes the provisions of either, it is so

a 1 Blacks. Com. 91. 160. 185. Christian's note to 1 Blacks. Com. 41.

b 8 Co. 118.

• Hob. Rep. 87.

d 12 Mod. Rep. 687.

e Bacon's Works, vol. vi. p. 128.

Power of the judiciary declare them void.

far void. (1) The courts of justice have a right, and are in
duty bound, to bring every law to the test of the constitution,
and to regard the constitution, first of the United States, and
then of their own state, as the paramount or supreme law, to
which every inferior or derivative power and regulation must
conform. (2) The constitution is the act of the people, speak-
ing in their original character, and defining the permanent
conditions of the social alliance; and there can be no doubt
on the point with us, that every act of the legislative power,
contrary to the true intent and meaning of the constitution, is
absolutely null and void. The judicial department is the
proper power in the government to determine whether a sta-to
tute be or be not constitutional. The interpretation or con-
struction of the constitution, is as much a judicial act, and
requires the exercise of the same legal discretion, as the inter-
pretation or construction of a law. To contend that the
courts of justice must obey the requisitions of an act of the
legislature, when it appears to them to have been passed in
violation of the constitution, would be to contend that the
law was superior to the constitution, and that the judges had
no right to look into it, and regard it as a paramount law.
It would be rendering the power of the agent greater than
that of his principal, and he declaring, that the will of only
one concurrent and co-ordinate department of the subordinate
authorities under the constitution, was absolute over the other
departments, and competent to control, according to its own.
will and pleasure, the whole fabric of the government, and
the fundamental laws on which it rested. The attempt to
impose restraints upon the exercise of the legislative power
would be fruitless, if the constitutional provisions were
left without any power in the government to guard *and *450
enforce them. From the mass of powers necessarily
vested in the legislature, and the active and sovereign nature

(1) A case in Pennsylvania has been recently decided involving an important political principle; the court held that a statute, authorizing the citizens of certain counties to decide by ballot whether the sale of spirituous liquors should be continued in said counties, was unconstitutional, as being a delegation of legislative power not permitted by the constitution, and contrary to the theory of the government. Parker v. Commonwealth, 6 Barr's R. 507.

(2) But in order to give the United States' courts jurisdiction, the statute, of which the validity is questioned, must have been passed by a state-a member of the Union. If other public bodies encroach upon the Union, redress must be sought in an exercise of some other powers of the government. Scott v. Jones, 5 How. R. 343.