Judge Spencer Roane

Virginia, 1821, on the right of the Supreme Court to review decisions of the Virginia courts:
....In a contest for rights between the two parties to the federal compact, neither is competent to bind the other, both because it would in such case, judge in its own cause, and make the contract what it pleased, and because they both have an equal right to interpret that contract, and neither is bound to yield the point to the other. The matter is to be referred to their common superior, the people, who will justly settle the dispute between them. We ought not lightly to suppose that either party will usurp upon the other, but that tendency would rather be imputed to the stronger government; and the one too, whose officials are not bound by oath, to respect the rights of the other party. Collisions between them are not to be causelessly apprehended; but they are the lesser of evils, when compared to the despotic power which is now claimed for the supreme court, and which would sweep away the rights of the weaker party. It is said by the able writer before mentioned, that it is better to bear with clashing constructions of the constitution, than to yield up all out powers to the general government. Again it is said in The Federalist, that a concurrent power between the government on the subject of taxation, is better than absolute subordination.

It is said by the supreme court, that this immense and unreasonable power is given to them by the constitution. By what articles and section of that instrument is it conferred? If it be given, the articles can be distinctly pointed out. None such can be found, and, as the lawyers say, this immense power ought not to rest only in averment. If it was intended to be given, in so important and unreasonable a case, would it not have been expressly given? When a right is claimed by one of the contracting parties, to bind the other to the extent of its pleasure and discretion, ought we not to have chapter and verse for it? When the great principle is to be set aside, which forbids a party to decide his own cause, ought that power to rest upon a remote and doubtful implication?....it is a sound rule of construction, that where the words of an instrument may be, otherwise abundantly satisfied you are not to construe them to embrace the most unreasonable cases. It would, therefore, not only have been expected, that this power should have been expressly given, but it ought also to have been put at the head of the list. It is, in every view, a much more important power than that of deciding cases between the United States and individuals, or cases between the states. It ought, therefore, to have been preceded the grant of this latter power, had it been intended to have been conferred.