In the first, the principle of law, that the judge is
to decide on law, the jury to decide on fact, is an ancient and
venerable principle and maxim of the law, and if supported in this
application by precedents of good times and of good men, the judge,
if wrong, ought to be corrected; he ought not to be reproved, or to
be disgraced, or the authority or respect to your tribunals to be
impaired. In cases in which declaratory bills have been made, where
by violence and corruption some fundamental part of the Constitution
has been struck at; where they would damn the principle, censure the
persons, and annul the acts; but where the law having been, by the
accident of human frailty, depraved, or in a particular instance
misunderstood, where you neither mean to rescind the acts, nor to
censure the persons, in such cases you have taken the explanatory
mode, and, without condemning what is done, you direct the future
judgment of the court.
All bills for the reformation of the law must be according to the
subject-matter, the circumstances, and the occasion, and are of four
kinds:- 1. Either the law is totally wanting, and then a new
enacting statute must be made to supply that want; or, 2.
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