Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 19.pdf/131

 The

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Published Monthly at $4.00 per Annum. Single Numbers 50 Cents. Communications in regard to the contents of the Magazine should be addressed to the Editor, S. R. Wrightington, 31 State Street, Boston, Mass. The Editor will be glad to receive contributions of articles of moderate length upon subjects of interest to the profession; also anything in the way of legal antiquities or curiosities, facetiae, and anecdotes. A CORRECTION An important manuscript, by Mr. Brooks Adams, published in our January number, has attracted so much attention in the press that we feel it necessary to take this opportunity to correct an error which we made in the para graph about Mr. Adams which we printed in another part of that number under the title "Our Contributors." Owing to a confusion of Professor Henry B. Adams of the University of Michigan with Professor Brooks Adams of the Law School of Boston University, both of whom are interested in the economic and legal questions arising out of rate regulation, Mr. Adams was described as a lecturer of the Law School of the University of Michigan and one of the advisers of the Interstate Commerce Commission. This last statement was par ticularly embarrasing to Mr. Adams since his only connection with the Interstate Com merce Commission was his appearance before it as counsel for the city of Spokane in an im portant case shortly after publication of this unfortunate paragraph. 1 JUDICIAL SUPREMACY In the Commonwealth of Australia are arising questions under the new constitution which bear a striking resemblance to those decided in the early history of our own Supreme Court, and indeed our own decisions are being constantly cited as authorities in these cases. Thus in a recent decision of the Privy Council Lord Halsbury declined to follow the decision of Chief Justice Marshall in McCulloch v. Maryland on the ground that no state of the Australian commonwealth has the power of independent legislation possessed by the states of the American union, and no tribunal exists like the Supreme Court in America which could declare an act passed by a colonial legis lature and assented to by the Crown void as

being against the constitution. Hence it was held that the state of Victoria had a right to impose an income tax on the official salary of an officer of the Commonwealth. Thus we are again reminded of the unique position in the history of jurisprudence which is occupied by the Supreme Court of the United States; the power to declare acts of Congress unconstitu tional has no counterpart in the history of other countries. From time to time we read in our legal periodicals contentions that this assumption of power by our Court was really unwarranted by the constitution, and replies showing that it was certainly in the contem plation of members of the constitutional con vention, but whatever the merits of the con troversy this power of the Courts has been hitherto accorded by the American people the respect due to the judicial ermine. Had the framers of our constitution comtemplated, however, that by the adoption of the 14th amendment the assumption of this power by the Court would force upon it the ultimate determination of the economic policy of the republic in questions about which great masses of our countrymen will bitterly differ, they must have hesitated before subjecting our judicial system to the tremendous strain which the political aspects of these questions are bound to bring upon the body which decides them. PSYCHOLOGY AND THE LAW Judge Brewer once made the text of an address before a religious gathering, explaining the reasons for his belief in immortality, the conviction forced upon him by years of ex perience on the bench that absolute justice is an impossibility in this world. We are ob liged to carve roughly in framing our skeleton of facts to which the law must be applied, but this is a necessity if work is to be accomplished. The real reason for the dif