[14] Hepburn _v._ Griswold, 8 Wallace 603. Decided in conference on Nov. 27, 1869, more than a month before Grier's resignation. Knox _v_. Lee, 12 Wallace 457. [15] 157 U.S. 608. [16] Pollock _v_. The Farmers' Loan & Trust Co., 158 U.S. 715. [17] In 1889 Mr. J.C. Bancroft Davis compiled a table of the acts of Congress which up to that time had been held to be unconstitutional. It is to be found in the Appendix to volume 131 U.S. Reports, page CCXXXV. Mr. Davis has, however, omitted from his list the Dred Scott Case, probably for the technical reason that, in 1857, when the cause was decided, the Missouri Compromise had been repealed. Nevertheless, though this is true, Tansy's decision hinged upon the invalidity of the law. Besides the statutes which I have mentioned in the test, the two most important, I suppose, which have been annulled, have to me no little interest. These are the Civil Rights Act of 1875, and the Employers' Liability Act of 1906. The Civil Rights Act of 1875 grew rapidly unpopular, and the decision which overturned it coincided with the strong drift of opinion. The Civil Rights Cases were decided in October, 1883, and Mr. Cleveland was elected President in 1884. Doubtless the law would have been repealed had the judiciary supported it. Therefore this adjudication stood. On the other hand, the Employers' Liability Act of 1906 was held bad because Congress undertook to deal with commerce conducted wholly within the states, and therefore beyond the national jurisdiction. The Court, consequently, in the Employers' Liability Cases, simply defined the limits of sovereignty, as a Canadian Court might do; it did not question the existence of sovereignty itself. In 1908 Congress passed a statute free from this objection, and the Court, in the Second Employers' Liability Cases, 223 U.S. 1, sustained the legislation in the most thoroughgoing manner. I know not where to look for two better illustrations of my theory. CHAPTER III AMERICAN COURTS AS LEGISLATIVE CHAMBERS In one point of view many of the greatest of the Federalists were idealists. They seem sincerely to have believed that they could, by some form of written words, constrain a people to be honest against their will, and almost as soon as the new government went into operation they tested these beliefs by experiment, with very indifferent success. I take it that jurists like Jay and Marshall held it to be axiomatic that rules of conduct should be laid down by them which would be applicable to rich and poor, great and small, alike, and that courts could maintain such rules against all pressure. Possibly such principles may be enforced against individuals, but they cannot be enforced against communities, and it was here that the Federalist philosophy collapsed, as Hamilton, at least partly, foresaw that it must.