minds in our communities have undertaken a study of the problem to determine the source and basis of the attacks upon the Constitution. A study of this question has led to the conclusion that there are two sources from which the various attacks upon the Constitution of the United States of America have been launched.

There is the small minority who are familiar with the history of the Constitution, its aims and ideals, who have attacked it at various times, and who now attack it in the belief that they will thus further their own political aim or that some Utopian scheme of government may be adopted which will usher in the millennium.

There are the other critics, by far the great majority, who have attacked the Constitution honestly but ignorantly. They believe that they have some panacea to offer for the ills of government, but they are not familiar with history and the experiments in government which have been made and which have failed; neither are they conversant with the conditions leading up to the framing and adoption of the Constitution, or of the way in which the government of the United States of America has functioned and developed since the adoption of the Constitution.

As to the first class which, fortunately, is a noisy but pitiful minority, their effectiveness is in direct proportion to the amount of attention which the public sees fit to give them.

The second class is in an entirely different situation. It has been found that even among our University graduates there are comparatively few who are really familiar with the events which resulted in the adoption of the Constitution of the United States, with the machinery of government which this document created, with the difficulties encountered by our forefathers, and with the ideals they hoped could be attained. In an endeavor to enlighten this

second group so that criticism of the Constitution of the United States of America should be based on knowledge, be constructive, and be of value rather than based on ignorance and misinformation furnished by those desiring the overthrow of our government, the state legislatures have required that instruction in the Constitution of the United States be given in the schools.

Upon the second question concerning what a course of instruction in the Constitution of the United States should embrace, there has been considerable diversity of opinion among those charged with the task of determining the content of such a course. Some few instructors have taken the position that the legislature by undertaking to prescribe a course in the school curriculum was infringing upon the freedom heretofore enjoyed by educational institutions of determining the subjects of instruction to be offered. The great majority of educators, however, have fallen in with the spirit of the legislation, and have made an honest endeavor to carry out the legislative intent.

Among those who have endeavored to cooperate with the legislature, however, there has been considerable diversity of opinion as to exactly what was the "legislative intent." In endeavoring to arrive at the legislative intent, it is necessary to consider the attacks that have been made upon the Constitution, and the merit, if any, in the changes which have been suggested. It was undoubtedly to counteract these attacks that the various legislatures acted. This, in turn, involves a consideration of the circumstances which led to the formation of the Articles of Confederation and later the Constitution of the United States of America, together with an understanding of the purposes and ideals of the framers of the Constitution, and a consideration of whether these purposes and ideals have been attained.

The attack now being launched with greatest vigor is

directed against the power of the Supreme Court of the United States to declare unconstitutional acts of Congress by decisions of a bare majority of the court. Much misinformation and many misstatements have been published and circulated regarding this power. A recent publication even went so far as to state that the United States Supreme Court had said that an amendment of the Constitution to protect our children from child labor exploiters is not legal, a statement which, as anyone who is even slightly familiar with the decisions of the Supreme Court knows, is utterly

erroneous.

The framers of the Constitution did not conceive any new form of government. They were content to accept the theories of government which the experience of ages had demonstrated to be best adapted for the welfare and happiness of men when associated in large numbers. They recognized that the form of government which nearest approached this ideal was one in which the sovereign power was divided into its three constituent parts: legislative, executive, and judicial, and in which each branch functioned independent in its own sphere, cooperating with the other coordinate powers toward a common end-the welfare of the governed. In addition, they recognized that the great weakness of all previous attempts to establish such a government based upon a tripartite division of the sovereign power was that one or the other of the constituent parts had always theretofore obtained supremacy and usurped the functions of the other divisions. In order to overcome this defect in the future, they conceived the idea that the elements of the sovereign power might be made to act and react upon one another in such a manner that each would be restrained within its prescribed field. With this end in view, limitations were placed upon the powers of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the

government. Even so, the framers of the Constitution were apprehensive that the legislative branch of the government, because of its direct connection with the people might, sooner or later, usurp the powers of the other two branches. This is evidenced by the following statement in the Federalist:

"In a government where numerous and extensive prerogatives are placed in the hands of an hereditary monarch, the executive department is very justly regarded as the source of danger, and watched with all the jealousy which a zeal for liberty ought to inspire. In a democracy, where a multitude of people exercise in person the legislative functions, and are continually exposed, by their incapacity for regular deliberation and concerted measures, to the ambitious intrigues of their executive magistrates, tyranny may well be apprehended, on some favorable emergency, to start up in the same quarter. But in a representative republic, where the executive magistracy is carefully limited, both in the extent and the duration of its power; and where the legislative power is exercised by an assembly, which is inspired, by a supposed influence over the people with an intrepid confidence in its own strength; which is sufficiently numerous to feel all the passions which actuate a multitude, yet not so numerous as to be incapable of pursuing the objects of its passions, by means which reason prescribes; it is against the enterprising ambition of this department that the people ought to indulge all their jealousy and exhaust all their precautions."

Even with this warning, individuals high in the counsels of the government have declared that the Constitution should be amended so as to deprive the Supreme Court of the United States of America of the authority to declare unconstitutional acts of Congress and have severely criticised justices of the Supreme Court of the United States who, abiding by their oath of office, have declared that the Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the land and that any act, even though it be an act of Congress, which is contrary thereto, is null and void. One of the most important questions before the American people today is whether the power of the Supreme Court is to be restricted by an amendment to the Constitution of the

United States. Whether such an amendment should be adopted is dependent upon the answer given to the query, "Has the exercise of this power by the Supreme Court been for the best interest of the people of the United States?" The answer to the question is to be found in a perusal of the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States holding unconstitutional acts of Congress and in a consideration of the effect of these decisions upon our national progress. Any person who takes the trouble to read these decisions. will find that, in the main, the decisions have simply confined the various branches of the sovereign power within. their sphere as outlined by the Constitution of the United States, and that in numerous cases, the Supreme Court has refused to accept powers with which Congress was endeavoring to clothe it, for the reason that there was no authority in the Constitution for the assumption by it of the functions proposed.

How to put these facts and others before the student has been one of the most important of the numerous problems which have been encountered by those who have endeavored to ascertain the proper instruction to be given through a course in the Constitution of the United States.

There have been writers who have discussed the Constitution of the United States from an economic point of view. Others have discussed the Constitution from a purely historical standpoint. Dr. Martin has looked at the Constitution in the light of the facts and endeavored to place in the hands of the student of the Constitution a book which would give the essential facts leading up to the framing of the Constitution, the conditions under which it was framed, the ideals of the framers of the Constitution, and the interpretation which has been placed upon the Constitution since its adoption. Dr. Martin, in his present book, has painstakingly accomplished this result. At the same time he has