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The term means that jurors may acquit even when they are convinced that the defendant is guilty as charged: Jurors refuse “to be bound by the facts of the case or the judge’s instruction regarding the law. ”64 But the philosophy of jury nullification is broader than black protest. ”65 The Congressional Presence Congress participates in constitutional decision making at all phases of the lawmaking process, from the enactment of legislation and approval of constitutional amendments to the oversight of governmental departments and agencies.

In response to a series of Supreme Court rulings invalidating both his New Deal reforms and his initiatives to gain control of the administrative state, Franklin D. Roosevelt struck back. Following his landslide reelection victory in 1936, he launched a counterattack, proposing that for every Justice over seventy years of age, he be authorized to appoint an additional Justice until the Court’s size grew from nine to fifteen. The Senate Judiciary Committee savaged the proposal, “declar[ing] that we would rather have an independent Court, a fearless Court .

19 Opposition to slavery came from the public, not from judicial, executive, or legislative actions. Individual Americans, untutored in the fine points of constitutional law, viewed slavery as repugnant to fundamental political, moral, and legal principles, especially those embedded in the Declaration of Independence. 20 Citizens felt a strong duty to express their opinions on constitutional rights. They deferred neither to courts nor to legislatures. Americans of the midnineteenth century “were not inclined to leave to private lawyers any more than to public men the conception, execution, and interpretation of public law.