Regarding the US Supreme Court being the decider of last resort, Madison’s Report of 1800 reads in part, “this resort must necessarily be deemed the last in relation to the authorities of the other departments of the government; not in relation to the rights of the parties to the constitutional compact, from which the judicial as well as the other departments hold their delegated trusts.” The government being referred to is the U.S. The parties to the compact are the states. Therefore, the theory here is that the U.S. Supreme Court can have its say after the U.S. President and the Congress, but not as binding on the States. John Breckinridge, who sponsored the Kentucky Resolutions in the Kentucky House, wrote, “Who are the judiciary? Who are they, but a part of the servants of the people created by the Federal compact?”[1] The Federal Courts are part of the US Government that was created by the states, so those courts can’t be the final deciders with respect to the states.
The complete essay is at Essays on Two Federal Empires.
1. James J. Kilpatrick, The Sovereign States: Notes of a Citizen of Virginia (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1957), p. 75.
