The eminently beneficial working of so singular a provision is
probably, as M. de Tocqueville remarks, in a great measure
attributable to the peculiarity inherent in a Court of justice
acting as such- namely, that it does not declare the law eo nomine
and in the abstract, but waits until a case between man and man is
brought before it judicially involving the point in dispute: from
which arises the happy effect that its declarations are not made in
a very early stage of the controversy; that much popular discussion
usually precedes them; that the Court decides after hearing the
point fully argued on both sides by lawyers of reputation; decides
only as much of the question at a time as is required by the case
before it, and its decision, instead of being volunteered for
political purposes, is drawn from it by the duty which it cannot
refuse to fulfil, of dispensing justice impartially between adverse
litigants. Even these grounds of confidence would not have sufficed to
produce the respectful submission with which all authorities have
yielded to the decisions of the Supreme Court on the interpretation of
the Constitution, were it not that complete reliance has been felt,
not only on the intellectual pre-eminence of the judges composing that
exalted tribunal, but on their entire superiority over either
private or sectional partialities.
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