Supreme Court of the United States

Abstract

BUT few words remain to be added to those so well spoken by my distinguished brethren, in concluding, on the part of the Bar, the expression which this occasion calls for.· * * * * * In its origin the Federal Court was an experiment, untried and uncertain. Judicial history has not furnished another example of a Court created by an authority superior to legislation and beyond the reach of executive power, clothed with a jurisdiction above the law it was appointed to administer, and charged not merely with the general course of public justice, but with the limitation of the powers of political government, and the adjustment of the conflicting claims of sovereign states. The hundred years that now terminate have tested the value of all American institutions. Fortunate as they have been for the most part, it will yet be the judgment of dispassionate history that no other has so completely justified the faith of its authors, or fulfilled with such signal success the purpose of its foundation.