"A legislature, without exceeding its province . . . may prescribe a new rule for future cases."
Still, people were concerned that the Court would have too much power. What if they started striking down laws passed by Congress and signed by the president, both elected by We the People, while the justices were merely appointed?
Hamilton's answer in Federalist no. 81 was that the Constitution itself prevented such an abuse of power, because the Supreme Court was explicitly subordinate to Congress.
"We have seen that the original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court would be confined to two classes of causes, and those of a nature rarely to occur [arguments between the states, and treaties with other nations]. In all other cases of federal cognizance, the original jurisdiction would appertain to the inferior tribunals; and the Supreme Court would have nothing more than an appellate jurisdiction, 'with such EXCEPTIONS and under such REGULATIONS as the Congress shall make.'" (Emphasis his.)
If that wasn't clear enough, in the next sentence Hamilton essentially repeated himself.
"To avoid all inconveniencies, it will be safest to declare generally, that the Supreme Court shall possess appellate jurisdiction both as to law and FACT, and that this jurisdiction shall be subject to such EXCEPTIONS and regulations as the national legislature may prescribe. This will enable the [rest of the] government to modify it in such a manner as will best answer the ends of public justice and security. (Emphasis his.)
He similarly noted in the Federalist, no. 78:
"Nor does this conclusion by any means suppose a superiority of the judicial to the legislative power. It only supposes that the power of the people is superior to both; and that where the will of the legislature, declared in its statutes, stands in opposition to that of the people, declared in the Constitution, the judges ought to be governed by the latter rather than the former."
Thus, right up until 1803, nobody was really sure how much power the Supreme Court had, but everybody was pretty sure it was very, very limited.
But in the past century, the Court has, in many ways, become the most powerful branch of the federal government and they're neither elected nor subject to any meaningful oversight from Congress, the president, or We the People. This is both dangerous and wrong.
Back in 1803 in the case of Marbury v Madison, the US Supreme Court took onto itself a power not given it by the Constitution: the ability to strike down or modify laws passed by Congress and signed by the President.
Thomas Jefferson was president that year and he flipped out. He bluntly expressed his concern to his old friend Judge Spencer Roane, the son-in-law of Patrick Henry and a justice of the Virginia Supreme Court:
"If this opinion be sound," Jefferson wrote, "then indeed is our Constitution a complete felo de se [a suicide pact]. For intending to establish three departments, coordinate and independent, that they might check and balance one another, it has given, according to this opinion, to one of them alone, the right to prescribe rules for the government of the others, and to that one too, which is unelected by, and independent of the nation".
President Jefferson continued in full fury:
"The Constitution, on this hypothesis, is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please. "
"My construction of the Constitution is very different from that you quote. It is that each department is truly independent of the others, and has an equal right to decide for itself what is the meaning of the Constitution in the cases submitted to its action; and especially, where it is to act ultimately and without appeal".
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