Hamilton, a big proponent of federal power, famously described the Court as "the weakest of the three departments of power." It argued that the people could never be endangered by the court—so long as the judiciary "remains truly distinct from both the legislature and the Executive."
It was precisely the separation of the courts from the other two branches, Hamilton argued, that gives the court its legitimacy. He asserted that "the natural feebleness of the judiciary" puts it in "continual jeopardy of being overpowered, awed, or influenced by its co-ordinate branches" and wrote it's "permanency in office"—meaning life tenure for judges—was "an indispensable ingredient in its constitution, and, in a great measure, as the citadel of the public justice and the public security." Continued he: "The complete independence of the courts of justice is peculiarly essential in a limited Constitution." Then the famous sentences:
"Some perplexity respecting the rights of the courts to pronounce legislative acts void, because contrary to the Constitution, has arisen from an imagination that the doctrine would imply a superiority of the judiciary to the legislative power. It is urged that the authority which can declare the acts of another void, must necessarily be superior to the one whose acts may be declared void. As this doctrine is of great importance inall the American constitutions, a brief discussion of the ground on which it rests cannot be unacceptable. There is no position which depends on clearer principles, than that every act of a delegated authority, contrary to the tenor of the commission under which it is exercised, is void. No legislative act, therefore, contrary to the Constitution, can be valid. . . .
"If it be said that the legislative body are themselves the constitutional judges of their own powers, and that the construction they put upon them is conclusive upon the other departments, it may be answered, that this cannot be the natural presumption, where it is not to be collected from any particular provisions in the Constitution. It is not otherwise to be supposed, that the Constitution could intend to enable the representatives of the people to substitute their will to that of their constituents. It is far more rational to suppose, that the courts were designed to be an intermediate body between the people and the legislature, in order, among other things, to keep the latter within the limits assigned to their authority." [emphasis added]
Eventually the Supreme Court itself, in the case known as Marbury v. Madison, spelled out the logic of judicial review
