This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1857 edition. Excerpt: ...can be no illegal exaction without such a protest. Our reasons for this opinion are there given at length. I/Ve have carefully reconsidered them, and find no reason to change the views there presented. The Supreme Court is purely a judicial tribunal, and nothing could detract more from the high character which it has justly attained in the United States, or tend more to impair confidence in its decisions, than the idea that it could be induced so far to transcend its legitimate powers, in any case, as to do more than to decide the very case submitted to it. It is true that, in presenting its views of the case decided, it may, with propriety, draw its arguments from any source, of which, in its discretion, it may approve. But no motive of public policy can be strong enough to justify or excuse that, or any other court in the United States, where the executive, legislative, and judiciary departments of the federal as well as of the State governments are most sedulously kept separate and distinct, in attempting, by a decision in one case, to lay down rules to be followed in any other case, not of the same character with the one decided. In making a decision in one case, no court can rightfully undertake to do more than merely decide that case. Its decision, by virtue of the principle which gives value to a judicial precedent, may be followed; and where it is the court of the last resort, in most instances ought to be followed in other cases. This is done, not because the court so orders, but by reason of the merits of the decision as a judicial precedent. It is upon this ground that the decisions of the highest courts become authoritative, and are regarded as evidences of great principles. The court is required to give its attention to the...

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1859 edition. Excerpt: ...differ entirely from claims under private acts granting pensions. When an act directs the Secretary to place a person by name on the pension list, at a specified rate, that is an absolute grant of the pension to the person named, and if he should die after such grant, leaving the pension or any part of it undrawn, the provision in the act of 1829, as to those who came after him, would apply. But as before said, the grant by the act of 1828 was conditional, and until the officer embraced by the act performed the condition, he could not be called a pensioner, nor would he leave in the treasury at his death any arrears of pension. There would be no pension there that he could have drawn himself, and of course he would leave none to be drawn by others. The appropriation act of 1828 has this provision: " For the pensions to the revolutionary pensioners of the United States, two hundred thousand dollars."----(4 Stat. L., 312 ) Now, was Thacher, as to said sum of $120 a year, one of those pensioners? He was not, for the reason that he had not complied with the condition contained in the act of 1828, under which he claimed. It would not, perhaps, be strictly proper to say that the only evidence of a person's being a pensioner is the pension list; but it is safe to say that without an adjudication in his favor as aforesaid, a person is not a pensioner, nor can he, at his death, leave arrears of pension descendible under the act of 1829.--(4 Stat. L., 350.) The next act is that of June 7, 1832. That act provides that "in case of the death of any person embraced by the provisions of this act, or of the act to which it is supplementary, (said act of 1828, ) during the period intervening between the semi-annual payments directed to be...