The Yale Review (Volume 6) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LIMITS OF CONSTITUTIONAL LAW. THE repudiation of the Chicago platform was undoubtedly due in part to its attack upon the Supreme Court. The most important function of that Court being to construe and enforce the Constitution, this was felt to be, in effect, an attack upon the Constitution itself. Many who, failing to appreciate the dishonor and disaster involved in the free coinage of silver as proposed, were ready to fall in line with Bryan and his followers, drew back when they realized that the programme included an assault upon the "bulwark of the Constitution " or an attempt to still its " living voice." Mr. Pomeroy, in his work on Constitutional Law, says: "There can be no doubt that the people are strongly convinced of the excellence of their organic law; that they will not yield their convictions to the demands of any theorizers; and that they will suffer no amendments except those which shall more completely carry out the ideas upon which the whole is based, which shall supply some omission or correct some inadvertency. I repeat, the Constitution as a whole must stand." Evidence in support of this opinion is furnished by the campaign of 1896. At the same time, there are signs enough of willingness in many quarters to do away with the restraints of the Constitution; and it is clear that appreciation of its benefits needs to be stimulated. The discussions of the late campaign did much to this end. But the education thus begun must go farther to be adequate to the needs of the times. The functions of the courts as guardians of the Constitution have been much considered. And this is well. But to stop here is to invite the thought, believed to be already too common, that the courts are all- sufficient for its enforcement, without active interest on the part of the pe...