ON JUDICIAL POWER AND UNCONSTITUTIONAL LEGISLATION; BEING A COMMENTARY ON PARTS OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES. BY BRINTON COXE, OF THE BAR OF PHILADELPHIA. "Does the Constitution express or imply the truth that its jus legum, which binds PHILADELPHIA: KAY AND BROTHER, JKIE Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1893 by ALEXANDER B. COXE AND GEORGE HARRISON FISHER, Executors of the Brinton Coxe dec'd, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 54090 2 During his last illness, Mr. Coxe expressed a wish that I should see this book through the press. When it reached my hands, all the first part of the work, including the 37th chapter, was not only set up in type but electrotyped, and is, of course, now published in the same condition in which its author left it. The remaining portion of the work was still in manuscript, and unfortunately not sufficiently completed to justify its publication. This conclusion has only been reached after careful consideration, but has seemed unavoidable. Some portions of the second part of the book were almost entirely unwritten, and what was written was in parts fragmentary, and plainly not in the condition in which its author would have published it. Notes and queries in the manuscript showed that he had in mind changes which he thought ought to be made, and these can, of course, be made by no one else. This is greatly to be re gretted, and the work, as it is now given to the public, lacks completeness in one sense; the purpose with which the author began it, and which he states in his Introduction, is not fully carried out. But I think this defect is more apparent than real, for the published portion is entirely capable of standing by itself, and contains all that was intended to form a part of the Historical Commentary upon the constitution. It is, of course, much to be wished that the Textual Commentary had been completed by the author, in order to meet the views of those he refers to on page 49 of the Introduction; but none the less the portion of the work which he did finish is complete upon the subjects which it treats of, and its great importance can not be doubted. |