Page:The Supreme Court in United States History vol 1.djvu/49

Rh of the citizen. "Considerate men of every description ought to prize whatever will tend to beget or fortify that temper in the Courts,*' said Alexander Hamilton, "as no man can be sure that he may not be tomorrow the victim of a spirit of injustice by which he may profit today."

Popular confidence in the strength and integrity of the Court has been further heightened by widespread knowledge of the fact that M all times the Court has received the aid, the support and the criticism of a Bar of the highest ability comprising lawyers from every section of the country ; and the fact that, for the first seventy years, the Federal Bar was largely composed of Senators and Representatives served ^to keep the representatives of the people in intimate touch with the proceedings and decisions of the Court. "Upon the lawyer equally with the Judges rests the responsi- bility for an intelligent determination of causes in the Courts, whether relating to pubUc or to private rights,'* said Judge Harlan at the Centennial of the Court. " It has been said of some judgments of the Supreme Court of the United States that they are not excelled by any ever delivered in the judicial tribunals of any country. Candor, however, requires the concession that their preparation was preceded by arguments at its Bar, of which may be said, what Mr. Justice Buller observed of certain judgments of Lord Mans- field, that they were of such transcendent power that those who heard them were lost in admiration *at the strength and stretch of the human understanding.'"

One further factor which has strengthened the Court in popular confidence and which has greatly served to lessen the chances of friction between the component parts of the Federal system of govern-