Trash talking right wing media lies claim 3 police officers

Devil505 wrote:Argue with this:

However, Marshall suggested that merely because a piece of legislation violates a constitutional principle does not necessarily mean that the legislation is unenforceable. "[W]hether an act repugnant to the constitution can become law of the land," Marshall noted, "is a question deeply interesting to the United States." Observing that the Constitution expressly delegates and limits the powers of Congress, Marshall asked, "To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing, if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained?"

Marshall argued that the "distinction between a government with limited and unlimited powers is abolished if those limits do not confine the persons on whom they are imposed, and if acts prohibited and acts allowed are of equal obligation." Marshall continued:

It is a proposition too plain to be contested, that the constitution controls any legislative act repugnant to it; or, that the legislature may alter the constitution by an ordinary act…. Between these alternatives there is no middle ground. The constitution is either a superior, paramount law, unchangeable by ordinary means, or it is on a level with ordinary legislative acts, and like other acts, is alterable when the legislature shall please to alter it… . If the former part of the alternative be true, then a legislative act contrary to the constitution is not law: if the latter part be true, then written constitutions are absurd attempts, on the part of the people, to limit a power in its own nature illimitable.

For Marshall, the idea that an unconstitutional act of legislature could "bind the courts and oblige them to give it effect" was "an absurdity too gross to be insisted on." Thus, Marshall concluded that congressional legislation contrary to the federal Constitution is null and void and cannot be enforced by a court of law.

Devil505 wrote:

jpete wrote:Thus, Marshall concluded that congressional legislation contrary to the federal Constitution is null and void and cannot be enforced by a court of law.

You're proving my point!

President ANDREW JACKSON once underscored this point when he exclaimed, "John Marshall has made his decision [in Worcester v. Georgia, 31 U.S. (6 Pet.) 515, 8 L. Ed. 483 (1832)], now let him enforce it!"