Page:Famous Living Americans, with Portraits.djvu/555

 582 FAMOUS LIVINO AMERICANS judicial system should have a command of both tiie great sys- tems of jurisprudence upon which western civilization has been built. There are three criteria by which a jurist is closely judged, and by which his position and his power are determined. The first has to do with his attitude toward the fundamental struc- ture of our government — toward the question of tiie relative position of state and federal functions; or, stating it popu- larly, toward the policy of loose or strict construction. Nur- tured in the school of strict construction and states rights, tiie attitude of the Chief Justice might be readily assumed; too readily indeed. There is no little significance in the fact that hanging upon the wall of his library and study — his work- shop — are the pictures of the two men who are most insep- arably connected with the national ideal ; the one giving it the broad foundation through legal interpretation, the other rais- ing its superstructure through the convincing eloquence of the forum — John Marshall and Daniel Webster. Like many an- other Southerner, the young Confederate soldier apparently accepted the settlement of the vexed question, given in a hwp- tism of blood, as final, and in his capacity as Justice, has fur- ther developed the field of national function and activity broadly surveyed by his eminent predecessor. This is illus- trated in his judgment in the famous Insular cases respecting our relations with our newly acquired island possessions, in which he united in the majority decision which upheld the principle of loose construction and supported the broad posi- tion taken by the Federal Government. One notable exception to his general support of the Government's contentions is found in his minority decision in the case for the dissolution of the Northern Securities Holding Company. He ably main- tained that the organization of the company had involved no unreasonable restraint of trade, that the transfer of proper- ties was a bona fide, legal transaction, and that the Govern- ment had accordingly no grounds for its action. The best business sense of the country probably upholds Justice White in his statement of the issues involved. A second criterion, somewhat closely related to the first, has