The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation: Annotations of Cases Decided by the Supreme Court of the United States to June 30, 1952
History
The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation: Annotations of Cases Decided by the Supreme Court of the United States to June 30, 1952
Constitutional law -- United States; Constitutions -- United States
In short, the substantive doctrine of due process of law does not today
support judicial intervention in the field of social and economic
legislation in anything like the same measure that it did, first in the
States, then through the Supreme Court on the basis of Amendment XIV, in
the half century between 1885 and 1935. But this fact does not signify
that the clause is not, in both its procedural sense and its broader
sense, especially when supplemented by the equal protection clause of
Amendment XIV, a still valuable and viable source of judicial protection
against parochial despotisms and petty tyrannies. Yet even in this
respect, as certain recent decisions have shown, the Court can often act
more effectively on the basis of congressional legislation implementing
the Amendment than when operating directly on the basis of the Amendment
itself.[76]
Resume
Considered for the two fundamental subjects of the powers of government
and the liberties of individuals, interpretation of the Constitution by
the Supreme Court falls into four tolerably distinguishable periods. The
first, which reaches to the death of Marshall, is the period of the
dominance of the Constitutional Document. The tradition concerning the
original establishment of the Constitution was still fresh, and in the
person and office of the great Chief Justice the intentions of the
framers enjoyed a renewed vitality. This is not to say that Marshall did
not have views of his own to advance; nor is it to say that the
historicity of a particular theory concerning the Constitution is
necessarily a matter of critical concern save to students of history. It
is only to say that the theories which Marshall urged in support of his
preferences were, in fact, frequently verifiable as theories of the
framers of the Constitution.
The second period is a lengthy one, stretching from the accession of
Chief Justice Taney in 1835 to, say, 1895. It is the period _par
excellence_ of Constitutional Theory. More and more the constitutional
text fades into the background, and the testimony of the _Federalist_,
Marshall's sole book of precedents, ceases to be cited. Among the
theories which in one way or other received the Court's approval during
this period were the notion of Dual Federalism, the doctrine of the
Police Power, the taboo on delegation of legislative power, the derived
doctrine of Due Process of Law, the conception of liberty as Freedom of
Contract, and still others. The sources of some of these doctrines and
the nature of the interests benefited by them have been indicated
earlier in these pages. Their net result was to put the national
law-making power into a strait-jacket so far as the regulation of
business was concerned.
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