Powers of the American People, Congress, President, and Courts; (According to the Evolution of Constitutional Construction) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: chapter{Section 4CHAPTER I THE PEOPLE WE, THE PEOPLE of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.?Preamble of the Constitution of the United States. THIS prominent term, the people, in the American acceptation is entirely different from the term as used in European and Asiatic countries. This distinct and different meaning is unknown to doctors of laws in these countries, no matter how thoroughly versed they may be in the principles of law, unless they receive the significance of the term in the true American acceptation. By the expression, the people of the United States, is meant, from the American standpoint, the whole mass of both male and female citizens, which constitutes the political unit. The American people are identified as a political entity, an artificial being, and are not a mere majority of the persons composing society or those having the right to vote. The people are the very creator of the whole fabric of the American Government, and the motive god that rules the American universe, whom both individuals and groups of individuals are bound to obey. When the people once determine a thing there is no appeal from it. They are above the Constitution. The American people, therefore, from every point of view,are sovereign, omnipotent, and can do no wrong. They are fallible only by their own free will and voluntary act. They alone have the power of expressing a command. The precise location of the sovereignty in England is in Parliament; in Japan, in the Emperor; and in America, in the peopl...