CHAPTER VIII. NATIONAL PRECEDENT ON RIGHT OF APPEAL

As before remarked, there are some who, in addition to the principle, desire authority. The authority has been given. Yet there are still others who, in addition to both the principle and the authority, desire precedent before they can be fully satisfied of the correctness of a position, and particularly such a position as is held in this discussion. And, fortunately for all, this position is supported by every kind of evidence that any person may desire. It is supported by the firm evidence of the national principle, by the satisfactory evidence of national authority, and by the final evidence of national precedent.ROP 152.1

The question still under discussion is the right of the people to appeal from and to reverse any decision of the Supreme Court of the United States touching any matter as to the meaning or interpretation of the Constitution.ROP 152.2

There are two notable examples of national precedent on this subject,-one in the action of each of the two great political parties of the nation’s history, the Democratic and the Republican parties.ROP 152.3

First, during President Jackson’s administration the Supreme Court decided that Congress could charter a National Bank, and that such bank was constitutional. President Jackson “asserted that he, as president, would not be bound to hold a National Bank to be constitutional, even though the Court had decided it to be so,” and, accordingly, vetoed the Act of Congress for a recharter. “The whole Democratic party revolted against that decision” of the Court, and “reduced the decision to an absolute nullity.” ^{29See speeches of Abraham Lincoln at Springfield, Ill., June 26, 1857, and July 17, 1858, “Political Speeches and Debates,” pp. 43, 156.}ROP 152.4

Secondly, the Supreme Court of the United States once rendered a decision on the slavery question in which a specific interpretation of the Constitution was made in favor of slavery as a national institution, and such interpretation declared to be the meaning and intent of the Constitution. The decision was endorsed by a large number of people, and it was ably defended in open and public discussion for several years by one of the leading men of the nation, a United States senator at the time-Stephen A. Douglas. Yet against all this, that decision was openly attacked, first in comparative obscurity and under great reproach, then in a larger field, and finally before the whole nation, by Abraham Lincoln; and the decision was reversed by the people of the United States.ROP 153.1

That decision was, and ever since has been known as,ROP 153.2