Note 23 — Chapter III · THE BEGINNINGS OF THE CHIEF JUSTICE’S CAREER; AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONAL LAW; MARBURY v. MADISON.
Reading edition
What Pinckney said in 1799 was this: “Upon no subject am I more convinced than that it is an unsafe and dangerous doctrine in a republic ever to suppose that a judge ought to possess the right of questioning or deciding upon the constitutionality of treaties, laws, or any act of the legislature. It is placing the opinion of an individual, or of two or three, above that of both branches of Congress, a doctrine which is not warranted by the Constitution, and will not, I hope, long have many advocates in this country.” Wharton, State Trials, 412.