In Switzerland the question whether the Federal Constitution ought to be amended must be submitted to a popular vote whenever demanded by either house of the Federal Assembly or by fifty thousand voters (about one-fifteenth of the voting population). A proposed amendment is adopted if it receives a majority of all the votes cast and at the same time a majority in a majority of the Cantons, a provision copied, as we have seen, in the Federal Constitution of Australia. These constitutions show the general tendency at the present time to make the majority supreme. In the countries which have been most influenced by democratic ideas constitutional barriers against change have largely or wholly disappeared. A constitution is in no proper sense the embodiment of the will of the people unless it recognizes the right of the majority to amend. Checks which prevent legal and political readjustment are a survival from monarchy and aristocracy and are not found in any full-fledged democracy. Constitutions which are really democratic contain only such checks upon the people, if indeed they can be called checks, as are calculated to insure the deliberate expression of the popular will. Constitutional provisions designed to obstruct amendment are not only an anomaly in popular government, but they are in the very nature of the case inoperative. This follows from the fact that the law-making body, whether it be the people themselves or a representative assembly, is the final interpreter of the constitution and may enact laws which virtually amend it. To make such provisions really effective the constitution must vest the power to prevent legislation in some branch of government not directly responsible to the people. Usually this is a King or hereditary class. Our Constitution, however, provides a substitute for these in its general system of checks and especially in the independence of our national judiciary, which in addition to the exercise of ordinary judicial functions is also practically a branch of the legislature. The constitutional status of the judiciary will be discussed in the following chapter. CHAPTER V THE FEDERAL JUDICIARY No part of our Constitution has received less adverse criticism than that which relates to the powers and tenure of the judiciary. Constitutional writers have almost without exception given it their unqualified approval, claiming that its wisdom is established beyond question by the political experience of the English-speaking race. To express a doubt as to the soundness of this view is to take issue with what appears to be the settled and mature judgment of the American people.