In the Federalist No. 78, arguing for the independence of a federal judiciary, Alexander Hamilton wrote that this independence “may be an essential safeguard against the effects of occasional ill humors in the society.” In Marbury v. Madison, Chief Justice John Marshall opined, “[i]t is emphatically the province and duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is.” In his comments to the Program Review and Investigations Committee of our state Legislature, Judge Robert C. Leuba, then-chief court administrator, said, in October 2000, “judicial independence is critical to the functioning of any democracy,” because it is the “duty of a judge to decide each case according to an objective evaluation and application of the law, without the influence of outside factors.”
Oliver Ellsworth, in the Connecticut ratifying convention, explained that the Constitution “defines the extent of the powers of the general government.” He supported judicial review as a “constitutional check” in the event that “the general legislature should at any time overleap their limits.” He stated that if they “make a law which the Constitution does not authorize, it is void; and the judicial power, the national judges, who, to secure their impartiality, are to be made independent, will declare it to be void.”
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