The Mayor v. Cooper

jgoodguy · Nov 19, 2017

HT @cash
THE MAYOR V. COOPER
(reference: MAYOR AND ALDERMEN OF CITY OF NASHVILLE v. COOPER)
A decision about who gets to interpret the Constitution and laws of the United States. One of the features of the Confederacy was the lack of a Supreme Court to have its Constitution and laws interpreted and applied by its own judicial tribunals. In the law arena the CSA States got to decide leading to potential problems if not actual ones.

"It is the right and the duty of the national government to have its Constitution and laws interpreted and applied by its own judicial tribunals. In cases arising under them, properly brought before it, this Court is the final arbiter. The decisions of the courts of the United States within their sphere of action, are as conclusive as the laws of Congress made in pursuance of the Constitution. This is essential to the peace of the nation, and to the vigor and efficiency of the government. A different principle would lead to the most mischievous consequences. The courts of the several states might determine the same questions in different ways. There would be no uniformity of decisions. For every act of an officer, civil or military, of the United States, including alike the highest and the lowest, done under their authority, he would be liable to harassing litigation in the state courts. However regular his conduct, neither the Constitution nor laws of the United States could avail him, if the views of those tribunals and of the juries which sit in them, should be adverse. The authority which he had served and obeyed would be impotent to protect him. Such a government would be one of pitiable weakness, and would wholly fail to meet the ends which the framers of the Constitution had in view. They designed to make a government not only independent and self-sustained, but supreme in every function within the scope of its authority. The judgments of this Court have uniformly held that it is so." [73 US 247, 253]

NathanTowne · Nov 19, 2017