Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story was a National Republican, and the basic constitutional thesis of national republicanism was that the Constitution establishes a national government with the power to provide the legal, financial, and physical infrastructure for a dynamic and expanding national economy that involves extensive interstate and international commerce (in the sense of buying and selling). Story’s doctrine of the Constitution implemented each of those principles. He was a proponent of a strong federal judiciary in the sense of one with broad jurisdiction. In Story’s vision of America, good government supported the efforts of the virtuous and industrious to make economic and moral progress. However, Martin Van Buren saw Story’s political system as one ruled by self-interested elites who were not faithful agents of the people, and sought to invent a political instrumentality more powerful than Congress, the President, and the federal courts put together: a modern political party.