The judiciary

But as courts do not claim the right of invalidating statutes and constitutions, they will not admit evidence, exterior to their language, to give them such a meaning, that they ought to be invalidated.

that is, the ends of justice—the security of men’s rights under their honest contracts, and under honest legislative enactments—make it imperative upon courts of justice to ascribe an innocent and honest meaning to all language that will possibly bear an innocent and honest meaning.

Another reason of the rules, is, that as governments have, and can have no legitimate objects or powers opposed to justice and natural right, it would be treason to all the legitimate purposes of government, for the judiciary to give any other than an honest and innocent meaning to any language, that would bear such a construction.

The relation of the judiciary to the executive, to the Parliament, and to the people, remains now much what it was at the beginning of the century, and no man dreams of maintaining that the government and the administration, are not subject to the legal control and interference of the judges.

the dogma of the separation of powers which, be it noted, still remains one of the sacred principles of 1789, is, as the doctrine is interpreted in France, absolutely inconsistent with interference by the judges with the action either of the government or of the administration.

“And we will that if any judgment be given from henceforth contrary to the points of the charters aforesaid by the justices, or by any others our ministers that hold plea before them, against the points of the Charters, it shall be undone and holden for naught.

“And albeit judgments in the king’s courts are of high regard in law, and judicia (judgments) are accounted as jurisdicta, (the speech of the law itself,) yet it is provided by act of parliament, that if any judgment be given contrary to any of the points of the Great Charter and Charta de Foresta, by the justices, or by any other of the king’s ministers, &c.

And, what is equally to the point, it would show that these same tribunals, the mere tools of kings and parliaments, would resort to the same artifices of assumption, precedent, construction, and false interpretation, to evade the requirements of Magna Carta, and to emasculate it of all its power for the preservation of liberty, that are resorted to by American courts to accomplish the same work o …