effective sanction behind any act of government.

The great potency of public opinion was recognized in the infancy of our government, long before the modern agencies for the enlightenment and organization of public opinion were developed. For example, it was mainly through the conversations and letters of Washington, Hamilton and others, that the people were led to demand "a more perfect Union"; and it was by means of the letters of Thomas Jefferson that the Democratic Party, which was to control the government for a half-century, was built up. Varied attempts were made, also, to provide a special machinery for the expression and direct action of public opinion. For example, Pennsylvania's Constitution of 1776 provided for a Council of Censors to act as interpreter and guardian of the constitution; and for the successful performance of this high duty, the Council was given the power of passing public censures, as well as the power of ordering impeachment and of recommending the repeal of unconstitutional legislation. Through the operation of this Board and its censure of the action of militia officers in the Wyoming Valley, a crisis in the relations between Penn

sylvania and Connecticut was safely passed. Vermont and New York adopted similar provisions in their Constitutions of 1777; and the same engine of public opinion was advocated in the Constitutional Convention for the federal government.

But not even this additional safeguard was deemed necessary to assure the authority and power of the Supreme Court. Public opinion was left to find its own means of expression; and yet the Supreme Court rests under the serene consciousness

that this expression in its favor, or in favor of its just and righteous processes, may be depended upon as surely as the sunrise. As regards the relations between the Court and a delinquent State government, the successful resistance of the State government would require a compact between the State's executive and judiciary, and the support of the people's representatives in the legislature as well as of the people themselves. If the people were sufficiently enlightened to distinguish between a constitutional exercise of judicial authority and an unconstitutional usurpation of it, a State's officers would ignore or defy the processes of the Supreme Court only in the clear case of a tyrannical exercise of the federal judicial authority.* At the same time that the public opinion in the State of the recalcitrant government was playing upon the officials, it would receive additional and overwhelming support from the public opinion within other States and within the nation as a whole. How powerful is this external public opinion, how much feared or spected it has been,-is proved by

re

* Compare Hamilton's argument in the "Federalist," No. 22, against the exercise of a State's right of secession or nullification. Public opinion can make itself directly effective in such cases by the process of impeachment.

the fact that whenever a State government has prepared to defy the federal government, it has moved heaven and earth to carry with it, not only the popular approval of its own citizens, but also the public opinion outside of its borders. For example, the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, the Hartford Convention, the South Carolina Conventions of 1832 and 1861, all made fervent appeals to the people of the other States. It is especially significant that these appeals were made by States which declared their free and independent sovereignty, in the same breath that they implored popular approval and support from the people of other States. When this appeal for popular support met with popular condemnation, the attempted resistance of the States to the Union collapsed-and this in face of the fact that Virginia went to the length of purchasing arms in 1798, and South Carolina actually enrolled troops in 1832.

It is true that in 1861, the Supreme Court's decision as to the right of secession would probably have proved powerless to prevent the Civil War, just as legal attempts on the part of the Executive failed to prevent it. The appeal was made by the South to trial by battle. But even the South itself acknowledged within a few years that it had acted in opposition to, or rather in the absence of, an enlightened self-interest, under the compulsion of a self-interest

which, so far from being enlightened, was blinded by the passions and prejudices connected with human

slavery; and it seems altogether probable that had there been in the South a well organized public opinion, though based solely upon an enlightened self-interest, the State officials would not have succeeded in their attempt to break up the Union. Hence, the logical conclusion is that, just as the best cure of the ills of democracy is more real democracy, so the strengthening of the government in general and the processes of the Supreme Court,-based as they are, in so far as regards the States, upon public opinion,-is to be procured by more public opinion, enlightened, organized, expressed and applied.

So deep-seated in the popular mind is the veneration and affection for the federal judiciary, that the people have decided on more than one occasion to protect it even from themselves. For example, the recent proposals for the "recall," first of judges, and then of judicial decisions, met with a genuine tempest of popular protest and denunciation. From the President down to the country editor, all classes of the people gave voice to their dissent. The general feeling of opposition, and the popular regard for the courts, upon which the opposition was chiefly based, was well expressed by Dr. Andrew D. White, who called the proposal "the most monstrous proposal ever presented to the American people or any other people," and said: "The one thing which the various peoples of the world envy us above all other institutions is the possession of the Supreme Court.

The most eminent authorities in all parts of the world speak of it with reverence as the greatest court ever created and the only one of its kind that has ever existed."

Madison, with characteristic cogency, sums up the subordination of both State and federal governments to the will of the people, in the following words: "The federal and State governments are in fact but different agents and trustees of the people, constituted with different powers, and designed for different purposes. The adversaries of the Constitution seem to have lost sight of the people altogether in their

reasonings on this subject, and to have viewed these different establishments not only as mutual rivals and enemies, but as uncontrolled by any common superior in their efforts to usurp the authorities of each other. These gentlemen must here be reminded of their error. They must be told that the ultimate authority, wherever the derivative may be found, resides in the people alone, and that it will not depend merely on the comparative ambition or address of the different governments, whether either, or which of them, will be able to enlarge its sphere of jurisdiction at the expense of the other."

WORLD

T is America's chief glory in these

IT

days of international organization to be able to give the world as an exemplar of the World Court its own great tribunal, the Supreme Court of the United States.

This court was "wrung from the grinding necessities of a reluctant people"; it was the chief instrument by means of which the overweening local "nationalism" of the thirteen States was transformed into the beneficent "internationalism" of the Union. From their declaration of independence, in 1776, and throughout the period of the Confederation, from 1781 to 1789, the State legis

latures had dominated the executives and the courts of both the States and the Confederation. Under the Con

"The Federalist," No. 46.

COURT

stitution, from 1789 onward, the Supreme Court checked the "nationalism" of the States and became the chief ally of Washington, Hamilton and their compeers in teaching their fellow-Americans to "think Conti

nentally." In our time the Hague tribunals have already begun to check the exaggerated nationalism of the nations; and the World Court is destined to become the chief agency in teaching the peoples of the world to "think internationally."

At the same time that the Supreme Court has developed State "nationalism" into "continentalism," it has

carefully refrained from infringing upon the intrinsic rights of the States; for example, it has itself declared that in every respect except where the acts of Congress have made special provision, the courts of the

States and of the United States are as distinct and independent in the exercise of their powers as are the courts of separate and independent nations.* Hence, if this precedent of the Supreme Court be followed by the World Court, there will be no danger lest rightful nationalism be swallowed up in an overweening internationalism.

"Judicial equality," as distinguished from the "equality of representation" in a legislative assembly, is admirably exemplified in our Supreme Court, in which nine justices give ample judicial representation to forty-eight Commonwealths.

This

great characteristic of the Supreme Court should point the way to the solution of the primary problem associated with the World Court, namely, How can forty-six nations secure adequate judicial representation in a court with only fifteen judges?

The Supreme Court itself decides whether or not a given case comes within its jurisdiction. This successful precedent may serve as the key to the difficulty, which exists at present, of determining whether or not

Rogers vs. Cincinnati, 5 McLean, 337; Riggs vs. Johnson County, 6 Wall, 166.

treaties of obligatory arbitration containing the loopholes of national honor, vital interests, and the like, can be made to bring international disputes before the international court, instead of to the arbitrament of the sword.

But this is not the place in which to detail all of the reasons why the Supreme Court may rightly be regarded as the great exemplar of the still greater World Court of the future. Suffice it to say, in conclusion, that the apparent helplessness of the Supreme Court in relation to the States of the American Union, because of its lack of any police or military force for the coercion of those States; and the real potency and marvelous success of the Court, even as regards those sovereign States, because of its possession of powers far superior, in origin, in operation, and in effectiveness, to police or military force,-that these two vital characteristics form the main reason why our New-World Court can be confidently offered as an exemplar of that All-World Court which is to cure the war-wearied world of its extreme nationalism and its rampant and world-destroying militarism.