THE TECHNIQUE OF JUDICIAL APPOINTMENT

Authors

Harold J. Laski, Of the London School of Economics and Political Science

Abstract

It is difficult to overestimate the significance of the judiciary in the modern state. The work of the executive has become so vast, the powers delegated to it by the legislature are so wide, that judges are, perhaps more than at any previous time, the real safeguard of personal liberty. It is only necessary to recall cases like Coppage v. Kansas, or R. v. Halliday, to realize how nearly judicial activity goes to the very heart of freedom. That is, of course, even more the case when, as with America, the constitution of the state is written, and the judges are its appointed interpreters. For they are then, inevitably, the masters of the constitution. Few written constitutions are easy to amend; and the ambit of legislative policy is not seldom defined by the knowledge of judicial decision. The fact that a court may regard a minimum wage law as a denial of freedom of contract, the belief that it looks upon the secondary boycott as a combination in restraint of trade, may well be decisive of what acts a legislature will place upon the statute book.

Recommended Citation

Harold J. Laski, THE TECHNIQUE OF JUDICIAL APPOINTMENT, 24 Mich. L. Rev. 529 (1926).
Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol24/iss6/2