Page:The Wisconsin idea (IA cu31924032449252).pdf/291

 primordial law of mankind. A case of conflict of the idea of law with itself which, for the individuals who have staked all their strength and their very being for their convictions and finally succumb to the supreme decree of history, has in it something that is really tragic. All the great achievements which the history of the law has to record—the abolition of slavery, of serfdom, the freedom of landed property, of industry, of conscience, etc., all have had to be won, in the first instance, in this manner by the most violent struggles, which often ldsted for centuries. Not unfrequently streams of blood, and everywhere rights trampled under foot, mark the way which the law has travelled during such conflict. For the law is Saturn devouring his own children. The law can renew its youth only by breaking with its own past. A concrete legal right or principle of law, which, simply because it has come into existence, claims an unlimited and therefore eternal existence, is a child lifting its arm against its own mother; it despises the idea of the law when it appeals to that idea; for the idea of the law is an eternal becoming; but that Which Has Become must yield to the new Becoming, since—Alles was entsteht,

Let us suppose that the Wisconsin court followed the New York court. Let us suppose that the New York courts again and again disregarded the will of the people, that they overreached themselves and bound the legislature hand and foot. What are we going to do about it? In the milder method of usurpation of power by decisions the courts have encroached upon the field of legislation—and is this not the true reason for the dis-