JUDICIAL INTERPRETATION OF CONSTITU WHE TIONAL PROVISIONS' FRANK J. GOODNOW Professor of Administrative Law, Columbia University HEN the constitution of the United States was adopted at the end of the eighteenth century, the conditions to which it was intended to apply were marked by three distinguishing characteristics. The first was geographical in its nature; the second was economic; the third intellectual. In the first place, the United States for which the constitution was framed, consisted of a series of communities, lying along the Atlantic seaboard of North America, largely engaged in agricultural pursuits and occupying sparsely populated districts which as compared with their population were richly endowed with natural resources. These communities were in the main connected one with another only by the sea and by the rivers and estuaries which in many instances penetrated far into the interior. Their social conditions were as diverse as their geographical condition was isolated. In some slave labor, in others free labor was the rule. In some one racial clement or one religious confession was most pronounced; in others another. Their comparative geographical isolation and their difference in economic and social conditions naturally had the effect of causing the states, as these communities had come to be called, to regard the maintenance of a large degree of local independence as of the greatest importance. In the second place, the economic conditions of the time were comparatively simple. Even the countries of Western Europe which were most advanced from an industrial point of view were only just beginning to make use of the factory system in their industrial organization. The hand tool had not as yet generally given place to steam-driven machinery. The 'Read at the meeting of the Academy of Political Science, Oct. 26, 1912. industrial worker in most instances still followed his livelihood within the narrow confines of his own dwelling and regulated the hours of his labor by his desires or necessities. The steam locomotive was just about taking shape in the imaginative minds of such men as George Stephenson. The only means of telegraphing was to be found in the beacon, the heliograph and the semaphore. No human being had even dreamed of the telephone. Such slight change in European industrial conditions as was due to power machinery and the building of factories had not taken place in North America, which as has been said. was predominantly agricultural in character. Finally, the philosophy of the time was based upon the conception that society was static rather than dynamic or progressive in character. Belief in verities eternal and absolute under all conditions was almost universal among educated men. Nowhere was this confidence in absolute and eternal truth more marked than in the domain of political thought. The various utopias which had been outlined by political theorists and philosophical dreamers had held before the mind of man a goal which he should strive to attain. An ideal state was pictured in which, if it were once reached, humanity would cease from striving and finally at rest would contemplate with complacency the hardships of the past and anticipate with satisfaction the joys of the future. It is of course true that political philosophers had not at the end of the eighteenth century, any more than at any other time in the history of man, reached a complete agreement as to the concrete measures whose adoption was necessary for the realization of the perfect state of which all had their visions. It is also true that the concrete measures which were recommended were frequently, if not always, evidently devised in view of the peculiar evils which each such prophet sought to remedy. At the same time while the political doctors disagreed somewhat as to the proper medicine, they all believed that some medicine would be permanently efficacious, and few, if any, of them imagined that the patient would by mere development so change as to make changes of treatment necessary. The proper treatment once discovered was to be continued for all time and would be followed by the desired results. |