Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 16.pdf/850

 The Supreme Court: An American Ideal. Genius for foresight was the great gift of our constitution makers. Much must be said in little if the wrangling statesmen of thirteen heterogeneous states were ever to agree. The yoke must be easy that should encircle so many wayward necks. Yet, if the statement of the law were brief, innum erable questions would arise; and, so, in order to bind the people to the charter under which they were to live, to stand be tween the legislature and the law, the Fed eral Supreme Court was erected. In this superlatively wise conception of the needs of a republican government lies the first rea son for this political ideal. "History," says Bryce, "knows few instru ments which in so few words lay down equally momentous rules on a vast range of matters of the highest importance and compiexity as the Constitution of the United States. . . . Probably no writing except the New Testament, the Koran, the Pentateuch, and the Digest of the Emperor Justinian has employed so much ingenuity and labour a« the American Constitution, in sifting, weighing, comparing, illustrating, twisting and torturing its text." It is the fate of all great laws to be so handled, indeed, it is the greatest tribute to their genius. It was inevitable that such a conception should at the beginning be bitterly opposed. From the outset the Supreme Court was criticised as being too far removed above the actual needs of government. Courts should be limited by well-defined restric tions; to place unlimited authority in any tribunal is contrary to Republican princi pies, said many members of the Constitu tional Convention. Elbridge Gerry wrote, "There are no well-defined limits of the Judiciary Powers; they seem to be left as a boundless ocean that has broken over the chart of the Supreme Lawgiver, 'Thus far thou shalt go and no further,' and as they cannot be comprehended by the clearest ca pacity or the most sagacious mind, it would

789

be an Herculean labor to attempt to de scribe the dangers with which they are re plete." Richard Henry Lee complained bit terly that "in the judges of the Supreme Court is lodged the law, the equity, and the fact." Fought over by tooth and nail, the Court finally came into being owing its ex istence to the wisdom of three men, Hamil ton, Madison and Marshall. Opposed on almost every other matter, these three fore saw the needs that would arise, the dangers, and the remedy. Political passions would disrupt the people of the federated States, Presidents and Congresses would be en gulfed in many maelstroms of popular de mand, there must be some rock from which to look far over the troubled seas. It was the view-point of this Court which gave this country the advantage, as that deep student of our institutions, Bryce, has put it, "of rel egating questions not only intricate and del icate, but peculiarly liable to excite political passions, to the cool, dry atmosphere of ju dicial determination. The relations." the same writer continues, "of the central Fed eral power to the States, and the amount of authority which Congress and the President are respectively entitled to exercise, have been the most permanently grave questions in American history, with which nearly every other political problem has become entangled. If they had been ¡eft to be set tled by Congress, itself an interested party, or by any dealings between Congress and the State legislatures, the dangers of a con flict would have been extreme, and, instead of one civil war there might have been sev eral. But the universal respect felt for the Constitution, a respect which grows the longer it stands, has disposed men to defer tf, any decision which seems honestly and logically to unfold the meaning of its terms. In obeying such a decision they are obey ing, not the judges, but the people who enacted the Constitution. To have foreseen that the power of interpreting the Federal