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 LAISSEZ FAIRE AND THE SUPREME COURT restrictive legislation, and more and more the courts are sustaining that legislation and reviving the old legal doctrines which had their origin before the on-rush of modern democracy and modern capitalism. The burdens cast upon the courts in this respect are enormous, for it is for them to judge in the great struggle between individualism and collectivism, to say how far the state and federal governments shall interfere with individual initiative and activity and how far not. It is for them to decide upon and formulate our great industrial and social policies. . That they have so far done this with supreme wisdom, few will deny. Nor can we deny that many of the decisions are conflicting and many confusing. In this the courts merely reflect the popular opinion. To use the language of Professor Dicey in his admirable article, "The Combination Laws as Illustrating the Relations between Law and Opinion in England during the Nineteenth Century," which recently ap

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peared in the Harvard Law Review,1 "The very confusion of the present state of the law corresponds with and illustrates a con fused state of opinion. We all of us in Eng land still fancy at least that we believe in the blessings of freedom, yet, to quote an expres sion which has become proverbial, 'To-day we are all of us socialists.' The confusion reaches much deeper than a mere opposition between the beliefs of different classes. Let each man according to the advice of preachers look within. He will find that inconsistent social theories are battling in his own mind for victory. Lord Bramwell, the most con vinced of individualists, became before his death an impressive and interesting survival of the beliefs of a past age; yet Lord Bram well himself writes to a friend, ' I am some thing of a socialist.' If then the law is con fused, it all the more accurately reflects the spirit of the times." GRAND FORKS, N. DAK., October, 1908. Vol. XVII, p. 532.