Independence Hall Home Search Contents Indexes Help  Article 3,
Section 1  Document 35  William Rawle, A View of the
Constitution of the United States 199--201, 274--80 1829 (2d
ed.)  No form of government is complete unless it be accompanied
with a judicial power.  To make laws and to execute them are the
two great operations of government; but they cannot be fully and
correctly executed unless there is somewhere resident a power to
expound and apply them. This power is auxiliary to the executive
authority, and in some degree partakes of its nature. But it is
also required at times to control the executive, and what it
decides to be unlawful, the executive cannot perform. It may
also in some degree be said to participate in the legislative
power. Its construction of the acts of the legislature is
received as binding and conclusive, although it does not prevent
the legislature from repairing its own defects, or clearing up
its own ambiguities by subsequent laws, operating on subsequent
cases. A high function