The Supreme Court and the Federal System

Abstract

ONE OF the salient features of our Constitution is its own special branch of federalism. The Founding Fathers sought to solve, governmentally speaking, the problem of the one and the many; and by extraordinary insight and a little bit of luck they made a novel and extraordinarily successful contribution to the science of government. No small part of our freedom and progress is due to the strength of the federal system. Our second unique contribution to the science of government is the Supreme Court of the United States and the doctrine of judicial review. The Court had no precedent, and to the best of my knowledge none of the judicial tribunals modeled upon it in other countries have played as important a role in national history. Certainly no other people has gone so far in committing fundamental and divisive issues, whether social, economic, governmental, or even philosophical, to a court for decision according to law. The habit has kept the Court in the center of a maelstrom of criticism ever since Jefferson's feud with John Marshall, but this habit too, I think, is part of the foundation of our freedom and progress. Manifestly, the Supreme Court and the federal system are closely linked. Since the beginning the Court has been the ultimate arbiter of the federal system, confining Nation and State each to its proper sphere and keeping each from interfering with the other. Without the Court's power to review this aspect of the constitutionality of state and federal laws when the issue arose in a case or controversy, the federal system could hardly have been successful.