I have a Constitutional question [View All]

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I have been racking my brain trying to figure out how certain laws are allowed to exist without being totally shot down the moment they're brought up. Am I missing something after I read the Constitution and some landmark Supreme Court cases?

Like for example: In pertaining to the USA Patriot Act. After reading Marbury v. Madison and not finding any Constitutional Amendments granting the federal government jurisdiction to usurp the Fourth, Sixth and Eighth Amendments as well as one's attorney/client and doctor/patient privilege.

Am I wrong in interpreting Marbury v. Madison as stating that NO legislative Act may override the US Constitution? Also, that each branch of government ONLY has powers granted to them by the Constitution? In other words: If there's no Constitutional Article or Amendment pertaining to a certain subject, then the federal government has NO jurisdiction in such matters?

If that be the case. Then how the fuck is the USA Patriot Act allowed to exists? Am I incorrect? Am I missing something? Or is it just that our government isn't a government of the US Constitution?

A foot note to this topic, as far as I am concerned, is also the Controlled Substance Act and asset seizure laws. I mean I don't see any Constitutional Amendment granting the federal government any jurisdiction in matters concerning drug use the way it had a Constitutional Amendment granting jurisdiction in matters concerning alcohol use after the Eighteenth Amendment was ratified. Nor do I see any Constitutional Amendment eliminating one's Fifth Amendment right not to be deprived of property without due process of law - which is what current asset seizure laws do.

Am I wrong on all this? Or is our government a big lie?

Excerpt from Marbury v. Madison

The question, whether an Act repugnant to the Constitution can become the law of the land, is a question deeply interesting to the United States; but, happily, not of an intricacy proportioned to its interest. It seems only necessary to recognize certain principles, supposed to have been long and well established, to decide it.

That the people have an original right to establish, for their future government, such principles as, in their opinion, shall most conduce to their own happiness is the basis on which the whole American fabric had been erected. The exercise of this original right is a very great exertion; nor can it, nor ought it, to be frequently repeated. The principles, therefore, so established, are deemed fundamental. And as the authority from which they proceed is supreme, and can seldom act, they are designed to be permanent.

This original and supreme will organizes the government, and assigns to different departments their respective powers. It may either stop here, or establish certain limits not to be transcended by those departments.

The government of the United States is of the latter description. The powers of the legislature are defined and limited; and that those limits may not be mistaken, or forgotten, the Constitution is written. To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing, if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained? The distinction between a government with limited and unlimited powers is abolished if those limits do not confine the persons on whom they are imposed, and if Acts prohibited and acts allowed are of equal obligation. It is a proposition too plain to be contested, that the Constitution controls any legislative Act repugnant to it; or, that the legislature may alter the Constitution by an ordinary Act.

Between these alternatives there is no middle ground. The Constitution is either a superior paramount law, unchangeable by ordinary means, or it is on a level with ordinary legislative Acts, and, like other Acts, is alterable when the legislature shall please to alter it.

If the former part of the alternative be true, then a legislative act contrary to the Constitution is not law: if the latter part be true, then written Constitutions are absurd attempts on the part of the people to limit a power in its own nature illimitable.

Certainly all those who have framed written Constitutions contemplate them as forming the fundamental and paramount law of the nation, and consequently, the theory of every such government must be, that an Act of the legislature, repugnant to the Constitution, is VOID.



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