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Supreme Court — Part 34
Page 22
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and as stated hy the Supreme Court of the United States, spoak-
ing throngh Chief Justice Marshall in the case of Marbury vs.
Madison, (1 Cranch 368, 388) when, referring to the safeguarding
provisions in the Constitution that the legislative powers be kept
aeparate from the powers of the judiciary, that Court said:
“To what purpore are powers limited and to what
Purpose ie that limitation committed to writing if
these limits may, at any time, be passed by those
intended to be restrained, . ... It is « proposition
too plain to be contested, that either the Constru-
tion controls any legislative att repugnant to ft, or
that the legislature may aiter the Constitution by
we Lenmitations are abenrd attempts, on the part
pia, to limit a powet in ite own nature il-
and, a0 stated by Abraham Lincoln, when, referring 10 our preeent
syetean of constitutional checks and limitations and the power of
the courts to enforce them, he said:
“Whocrer rejects it does of necessity fly to anarchy
ot despotiem”™;
and as stated by Elihu Root, when he said:
“A sovereign people which declares that all men
have certain inalienable rights, and impoees upon it-
self the great impersonal rulés of conduct deemed
necessary for the preservation of those ri and
at the same time declares that ft will drorctend thee
rules whenever, in any particular case, it is the wish
of & majority of its voters to. do so, establishes as
complete a contradiction to the fundamental prin-
Siples of our government as it is possible to conceive.”
AND WHEREAS the adoption of such amendment would have
the effect to eliminste all distinctions between the powers of leg-
islstion which have by the Constitution been retained by the re-
spective States and those which were specifically granted to the
Federal Government, and would thereby tend to deprive the
States of their reserved rights of self-government, and to centralize
all powers of government, local and national, in the ae
cording as the Congress might from time to time choose; aad
thereby such amendment in the aforessid reepects and in other
respects would tend to become the basis of arbitrary and unlimit-
ed legislative powers in the Congress to disregard, in chosen in-
stances, all other constitutional limitations on legislative power
and through such processes to change our system of government
from a government by law to a government by men: and further
would tend to leave the individual citizen and minorities subject
to the caprices and whims of temporsry majorities and without
the protection of ihe safeguarding principles of the Bills of
Rights established by Magna Charta and written into all Amer
ican Constitutions, state and federal;
AND WHEREAS the advocacy of such constitutional amend-
ment can be founded only upon disregard or ignorance of the:
principles of government which have made oor American system
the most efficient protection against oppression and a scientific
model! for the establiahment of evnstitational democracies hav
ing in view the freedom of the citizen from the tyranny of either
& pure democracy, on the one hand, or of an arbitrary monarchy
or oligarchy, upon the other hand;
NOW THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED by the Heumpin
County Bar Association that we express our unqualified opposi-
tion to such constitutional amendment or to any amendment of
timiler character as a most dangerous menace to our American
Government and to American Institutions; and
BE iT FURTHER RESOLVED that we individually and colles-
tively urge upon all lawyers end upon all citizens, both within
and without this Asociation, to exercise the utrnost activity in
opposing any such amendment and in teaching ite repagnance to
the principles of our Constitutional Government and its menace
to the individus] liberties guaranteed by our American Constita-
tions;
AND BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that a copy of this Reso-
Jution be forwarded hy the proper officers of this Association tg
every bar association in the country, and particularly to the
American Bar Association, with the request that such action be
teken that the opposition of American lawyers to such proposed
amendment may be announced and published with the utmost
emphasis and with the greatest prompttees possible.
’
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