But Judge Douglas considers this view
awful. Hear him:
"The courts are the tribunals prescribed by the Constitution and created
by the authority of the people to determine, expound, and enforce the
law. Hence, whoever resists the final decision of the highest judicial
tribunal aims a deadly blow at our whole republican system of
government--a blow which, if successful, would place all our rights and
liberties at the mercy of passion, anarchy, and violence. I repeat,
therefore, that if resistance to the decisions of the Supreme Court of
the United States, in a matter like the points decided in the Dred Scott
case, clearly within their jurisdiction as defined by the Constitution,
shall be forced upon the country as a political issue, it will become a
distinct and naked issue between the friends and enemies of the
Constitution--the friends and the enemies of the supremacy of the laws."
Why, this same Supreme Court once decided a national bank to be
constitutional; but General Jackson, as President of the United States,
disregarded the decision, and vetoed a bill for a recharter, partly on
constitutional ground, declaring that each public functionary must
support the Constitution "as he understands it.
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