Mr. Justice Bradley declared that it might truly be said that “the Constitution received its permanent and final form from judgments rendered by the Supreme Court during the period in which Marshall was at its head;” and that, “with a few modifications, superinduced by the somewhat differing views on two or three points of his great successor, and aside from the new questions growing out of the Civil War and the recent constitutional amendments, the decisions made since Marshall’s time have been little more than the applications of principles established by him and his venerated associates.”  To the rule that Marshall’s great constitutional opinions continue to be received as authority, there are, however, a few exceptions, the chief of which is that delivered in the Dartmouth College Case, the particular point of which—­that acts of incorporation constitute contracts which the State legislatures can neither alter nor revoke—­has been greatly limited by later decisions, while its effect has been generally obviated by express reservations of the right of amendment and repeal.  With rare exceptions, however, his constitutional opinions not only remain unshaken, but continue to form the very warp and woof of the law, and “can scarcely perish but with the memory of the Constitution itself.”  Nor should we, in estimating his achievements, lose sight of the almost uncontested ascendency which he exercised, in matters of constitutional law, over the members of the tribunal in which he presided, in spite of what might have been supposed to be their predilections.  When constitutional questions trench, as they often do, on the domain of statesmanship, it is natural, especially where precedents are lacking, that judges should divide upon them in accordance with the views of government maintained by the political parties with which they previously acted; and after 1811, a majority of Marshall’s associates on the bench held their appointment from administrations of the party opposed to that to which he had belonged.  This circumstance, however, does not appear to have disturbed the consistent and harmonious development of the system to which he was devoted; and it was in the second half of his term of service that many of the most important cases—­such as McCulloch v.  Maryland, Cohens v.  Virginia, and Gibbons v.  Ogden, in which he asserted the powers of national government—­were decided.

Nor is it alone upon his opinions on questions of constitutional law that Marshall’s fame as a judge rests.  The decisions of the Supreme Court on constitutional questions naturally attract greater popular interest than its judgments in other matters; but we have seen that its jurisdiction embraces a wide range of subjects.  Nor is it desirable that its sphere of action should be circumscribed in the direction of confining it to questions that have a semi-political aspect.  Indeed, it may be believed that the safety and permanence of the court would be