In many of the current assaults upon the judicial department, in support often of schemes having their birthplace on the continent of Europe, we find the complaint that in declaring statutes unconstitutional the courts in this country--state and federal--exercise greater power than the courts of other countries are authorized to exercise. As if that were an argument against American institutions! Every schoolboy knows that the framers intended that our government should differ from every other government in the world. The founders not only intentionally departed from the examples of existing governments, but anxiously sought to establish a new form of republican government, which would perpetuate the spirit of the Declaration of Independence, secure the inalienable rights of the individual, and protect the minority against the oppression or tyranny of the majority. It was because these rights of the individual against majorities and every form of governmental power were to be made secure and sacred, as the founders believed, that we were to differ from other governments. And the essential and effective feature of that difference was to lie in the power vested in the judicial department to uphold and protect these rights. High sounding declarations of the rights of man would mean very little if they were not to be enforceable by the courts. When our form of government is compared with that of other countries, and we are told that in England or in France or elsewhere so-called progressive measures have been forced into immediate operation by the will of the majority, and that the courts there were powerless to interfere, is it seriously intended to suggest to the people of the United States that they should, therefore, cast aside all constitutional restraints, all their ancient and honest constitutional principles, and leave the protection of life, liberty and property wholly in the hands of the legislative branch? Are there not still certain rights which even those who are assailing our institutions, under the protection of the very Constitution they deride, would want to have protected by our courts? When it is urged that the courts should not have power to declare an act unconstitutional, but should be compelled to enforce all legislative enactments although some of them might conflict with the Constitution, is it realized that the bill of rights would then be left to the arbitrary discretion or caprice of the legislature, and that consequently it would be of no more practical protection to the individual than the paper constitutions of some of the South American republics which, too, contain eloquent declarations of the rights of the individual? Is it forgotten or overlooked that in England and France and all the other countries with whose systems of government ours is being compared, the legislative power is practically supreme, and that it can outlaw or disseize or imprison at its mere will--that it can deny religious liberty, abridge