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 The Courts and Social Questions sequences that would follow from the breaking down of the protection af forded by the courts under our Consti tution to the rights of the individual with respect to his personality as well as to his property. This tendency of de mocracy to throw off the obligation of a rigid constitution was earnestly con demned by Mr. Justice Lurton in his address to your association at your meeting in Virginia last summer, and there is no need for me even to remind you of the propositions which he pre sented or of the chain of reasoning by which they were powerfully enforced. It is because the preservation of the obligation of our Constitution is so im portant a feature of our government that the seriousness of the struggle of democ racy for greater freedom of legislation should be fully appreciated, and that it should be met in such a way as not to prejudice the minds of the people against the guarantees which our form of government pre-eminently has secured for the protection of the people, whether individuals or groups, against the arbi trary exercise of power on the part of the governing power of the state, whether it be the king or the vote of a -majority. The rights of individuals, or rather their immunities against the government, are substantially the same in all modern constitutional states, but in the United States alone is there an effective legal guarantee of those immunities against the government. In England the whole sovereign power of the state is in Parlia ment, and there is no legal power to restrain Parliament from invading the domain of the individual into which it is generally recognized that the govern ment should not penetrate. For the enforcement of this guarantee against the legislature as well as the executive, we are indebted to the decisions of the courts in cases between parties on the

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question whether or not an act of the legislature is in accordance with the fundamental law. How valuable this has been to us in the preservation of personal liberty and of the sense of justice as between the government and the individual we cannot too fully appreciate. During the whole course of our history the courts have corrected the injustice done by ill-considered laws pavssed with the best intentions, and there have been many times when the strong desire of a majority to accomplish a much-needed reform has led them to ignore the injustice of the incidental effect of the means they take to accom plish it. There is no need for me to emphasize before this body of lawyers the importance of these constitutional guarantees, nor the duty of the courts to perform the onerouo duty which the frame of our Constitution has imposed upon them. These guarantees are vital to our institutions and to the character of our people, and the duty of the courts in this respect is supreme.' How they are discharging that duty will appear in their decisions, some of which I will refer to. What I wish to call attention to now is the fact that at the present time the struggle over the obligation of the Constitution is concerned, not so much with the relation of the states to the federal government (though that ques tion, with sides reversed, is still a vital one), as with the demand of democ racy for freedom of action in dealing with changed conditions and new social and industrial problems. The provisions of the American constitutions, the inter pretation and application of which are now challenged, are those which were adopted as a part of our heritage from the conquests of English freemen over the arbitrary power of an unlimited monarchy, and modern democracy chafes