Martin v. Hunter's Lessee - Milestone Documents

Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee

( 1816 ) Commentary by Thomas H. Cox, Sam Houston State University
  • “The Constitution of the United States was ordained and established not by the States in their sovereign capacities, but emphatically, as the preamble of the Constitution declares, by ‘the people of the United States.' There can be no doubt that it was competent to the people to invest the general government with all the powers which they might deem proper and necessary, to extend or restrain these powers according to their own good pleasure, and to give them a paramount and supreme authority.” - Chief Justice Joseph Story
  • “This instrument, like every other grant, is to have a reasonable construction, according to the import of its terms, and where a power is expressly given in general terms, it is not to be restrained to particular cases unless that construction grow out of the context expressly or by necessary implication. The words are to be taken in their natural and obvious sense, and not in a sense unreasonably restricted or enlarged.” - Chief Justice Joseph Story
  • “The Constitution unavoidably deals in general language. It did not suit the purposes of the people, in framing this great charter of our liberties, to provide for minute specifications of its powers or to declare the means by which those powers should be carried into execution. It was foreseen that this would be a perilous and difficult, if not an impracticable, task. The instrument was not intended to provide merely for the exigencies of a few years, but was to endure through a long lapse of ages, the events of which were locked up in the inscrutable purposes of Providence.” - Chief Justice Joseph Story
  • “From the very nature of things, the absolute right of decision, in the last resort, must rest somewhere—wherever it may be vested, it is susceptible of abuse. In all questions of jurisdiction, the inferior or appellate court must pronounce the final judgment; and common sense, as well as legal reasoning, has conferred it upon the latter.” - Chief Justice Joseph Story
  • “On the other hand, so firmly am I persuaded that the American people can no longer enjoy the blessings of a free government whenever the State sovereignties shall be prostrated at the feet of the General Government, nor the proud consciousness of equality and security any longer than the independence of judicial power shall be maintained consecrated and intangible, that I could borrow the language of a celebrated orator and exclaim, ‘I rejoice that Virginia has resisted.’” - Justice William Johnson
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Joseph Story (Library of Congress)

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