SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18952, 28 August 1923, Page 10

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES.

THE “GOLDEN AGE” OF OLAY AND WEBSTER. Mr J. M. Beok, Solicitor-general of Hie United States, and Honorary Bencher of Gray’s Inn, gave a lecture in London a few weeks ago. his subject being “The Golden Age of tire Supreme Court.” When the court began its sessions.* ho said, in 1790, the first question that arose was, “How should the justices be gowned?” Thomas Jefferson had just returned from Paris, and he was vehemently opposed to “any needless official apparel” as undemocratic. He was willing to tolerate the gown, but he said, “For Heaven’s sake diserd the monstrous wig, which makes the English judges look like rats peeping through bunches of oakum.” The first half century of the Supremo Court, said Mr Beok, was its golden age, for during that time it rendered the great pioneer decisions under the United oiates system of government, and under the leadership of Mr John Marshall, who served as Chief Justice from 1801 to 1855, slowly built up the imposing edifice of govern ment known to-day. “It was possibly the greatest forum of intellectual debate of which civilisation has any knowledge,” Mr Beck went on. “There had been great courts before, but none had had this peculiar and extraordinary function of determining in like measure the very form of the Government whose laws it was interpreting. It was, in truth, a supor-Senate. . . , America, and, in-

deed, tho civilised world, has given praise in ungrudging measure to Marshall and his great associates, but too little has been said of the groat men of the bar who primarily fought out the mighty issues of constitutional liberty, and from whom, in so many instances, tho court received its inspiration.

"With the judiciary,- as with every institution of human society, this period was tho ago of quality rather than, as at the present time, an age of quantity. It was tho age of the wheelbarrow as contrasted with the present age of the aeroplane. Men had still time to think with patience and deliberation of the supreme issues of life. , The bankruptcy of present-day civilisation seems to bo largely due to the fact that the complicated processes of modern life have placed an excessive strain upon the very limited abilhof man. Government in all its branches is slowly breaking down under this inordinate pressure.” Speaking of the feasts of argument of the early days of the court, Mr Beck said that the justices for lack of private rooms, robed themselves in court, and eat on a long seat at the oast end of the room on a raised platform. On tho floor was a long table, with chairs for tho lawyers and for the audience. Tho room was often so crowded that the judges were on more than one occasion almost pushed off their platform by the society ladies of Washington, who sat behind and before them.

One advantage of tho interminable arguments of the earlier days _ was that they obviated tho long delays in tho decisions which were now so frequent. Following the custom of the English Courts, the Supreme Court generally reached a decision very shortly after the conclusion of tho argu ment. Thevo were then no lengthy printed briefs to be examined requiring a postponement of such decision.

“There were giants in those days,’’. Mr Back said; “Clay was the Charles James Fox of America, as Webster was its Edmund Burke.” He quoted from a contemporary account, of the Girard will case (1844), m which Webster appeared, the folio'---mg:— “Throughout the courtroom there is a groat silence, sa.ve now and then when a bevy of ladies come in. In fact, it looks more like a ballroom sometimes; and if old Lqld Eldon and the defunct judges of Westminster would walk in frorn their graves, each particular whalebone in their wigs would stand on end at this mixture of men ami women, law and politeness, ogling and flirtation, bowing and curtseying, going on in the highest tribunal in America.” Burke had somewhere said, Mr Beck said at the. end of his lecture, that society was a sacred compact between the noble dead, the living, and the unborn. Did not the Supreme Court of the United States realise this generous ideal? It compelled the living generation, too often swept by selfish interests and frenzied passions, to respect the immutable principles of liberty anti justice formulated by men who long since had joined the silent majority. The Supreme Court of the United States must often defeat the ardent purposes of the living and affront the pride and power of temporary majorities. Continuously through its history its great decisions, when they defeated some momentary wish of the majority, had caused a violent reaction against the moral power of tho_ court. Only a people with sufficient genius for _ selfrestraint, and willing to accept the judgments of a court as the final conscience of the nation in matters of constitutional morality, could make such an institution workable in a proud democracy._ Nothing seemed to him nobler in the history of the American Republic than the fact that, while each unpopular decision of the court had been followed by a temporary attack upon its powers, yet the sober second judgment of the American people had always been to accept loyally the judgment of this groat court.