The idea of a permanent Judiciary
had been one of the results of the political struggle with Great Britain
preceding the Revolution. Jefferson also regretted that no one in the
Convention of 1787 had thought of changing the vote necessary for
removing a judge by impeachment from two-thirds to a majority.
Year after year, during the Republican administrations, the national
Judiciary had been quietly shoring up by its decisions the fabric of
the Union, as fate compelled the Jeffersonians to erect it. The
"formative decisions" of John Marshall, during his thirty-four years
on the Supreme bench, maintained constantly the rights of the Federal
courts and added to the prerogatives of the Central Government against
the States. Scarcely a decision favoured the reserved rights theory.
By the opinion in Marbury _vs_. Madison, already quoted, the Executive
branch, presumably entirely divorced from the Judiciary, was found to
be under a certain control. The case of Cohens _vs_. Virginia sustained
the power of the Federal court over an appeal from a State court. It
often happened that in a decision, as in the case of Insurance Company
_vs_.
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