In February of this year, Mr. Roosevelt delivered an address before the Ohio constitutional convention, in which he discussed the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the Employers' Liability cases,[16] decided while he was President. The court then held that the act of Congress of June 11, 1906, sometimes erroneously called the National Workmen's Compensation Act, attempted to regulate the internal affairs of the several states as well as interstate commerce, that it consequently included a subject not within the constitutional power of Congress, and that the two matters were so blended that they were incapable of separation unless the court made a new statute in the place of the one enacted by Congress. Conscientiously entertaining this view, the majority of the court would have been guilty of the plainest constitutional immorality if they had not declared that the act was beyond the power of Congress and declined to give it effect. No honest men, believing as the majority did, could have done otherwise than obey the constitutional mandate expressly reserving to the states the legislative powers not delegated to Congress. In the light of the long-established and wise rule that courts should avoid judicial legislation and not revise or give effect to a statute in a manner not clearly intended by the legislative body, the justices could not, of course, have upheld and enforced the statute simply because the individual cases before them excited their sympathy or involved the claims of widows. The remedy was obvious and simple. Congress was then in session, and within a few days an amended statute could have been enacted so as to limit the act to interstate commerce, which alone was within the constitutional power of Congress to regulate. After the lapse of three months, such a law was enacted, and being plainly confined to interstate commerce, as the original statute should have been, and would have been if properly and competently drafted, the amended act was unanimously sustained by the Supreme Court as constitutional in the Second Employers' Liability cases, decided this year,[17] when it was held that Congress had power to change the common law rules as to assumption of risk, contributory negligence and fellow-servants' acts in connection with the regulation of interstate commerce.