Lecture on the Implied Powers of the Constitution: Delivered by Special Request to the Law School of Georgetown University, in Washington, D. C., On Monday Evening, February 16, 1885 (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Lecture on the Implied Powers of the Constitution: Delivered by Special Request to the Law School of Georgetown University, in Washington, D. C., On Monday Evening, February 16, 1885

Wve hear a great deal, and probably we shall continue to hear a great deal, about a liberal and a strict construction of the Constitution. You are engaged in a study of the Con s'titution preparatory to taking your places in active life as lawyers and citizens. It is of great importance for you, therefore, to know whether it is correct to regard the so called strict construction as inadmissible because it is too narrow; whether the so-called liberal construction is always the safe one and whether there is not a clear and well de fined rule of interpretation, which should not be called either strict or liberal, in the sense of being harmful and injurious to the great objects for which this Constitution was created. And here let me advise you not to be governed by what is supposed to be the characteristic tendency of this or that political party, in forming your opinions about the Consti tution of your country. You have something higher and better to do, in prosecuting the studies in which you are now engaged, than to accept the dogmas of a party because you or your friends may happen to act with it. What you have to do is to subject party dogmas to the proper tests of truth and sound reasoning, leaving the result to fall where it may, so far as all political parties are concerned.

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