Page:The Supreme Court in United States History vol 1.djvu/15

Rh I have not attempted a detailed description of the Court and of its important cases later than the close of the Chief Justiceship of Waite. The succeeding thirty years of Chief Justices Fuller and White comprise a period so recent and so clearly within the view of living men as to render such detailed treatment unnecessary. Moreover, the proper historical perspective is lacking. Accordingly, I have given but a broad general outline of the leading cases and doctrines during the years 1888 to 1918.

No one can read the history of the Court's career without marveling at its potent eflfect upon the political development of the Nation, and without concluding that the Nation owes most of its strength to the determination of the Judges to maintain the National supremacy. Though, from time to time, Judges have declared that the preservation of the sovereignty of the States in their proper sphere was as important as the maintenance of the rights vested in the Nation, nevertheless, the Court's actual decisions at critical periods have steadily enhanced the power of the National Government; and the result has been that, as Edward S. Corwin has recently said in his John Marshall: "The Court was established under the sway of the idea of the balance of power. . . . The Nation and the States were regarded as competitive forces, and a condition of tension between them was thought to be not only normal, but desirable. The modern point of view is quite diflferent. Local differences have to a great extent disappeared, and that general interest which is the same for all the States is an ever-deepening one." It is interesting to surmise what would have been the status of the United States today, had the Judges, after appointment to the Supreme Bench, adopted or continued to hold the narrower