JUDICIAL POWER IN THE UNITED STATES

Authors

William W. Potter, Attorney General of the State of Michigan when this was written; now a member of the Supreme Court of Michigan

Abstract

The right of courts to declare legislative acts unconstitutional has been claimed and denied from the beginning of our government. The late Senator La Follette asserted that the power had been usurped, and proposed a constitutional amendment to curb such action. The framers of the constitution had been British colonists. Its fundamental ideas are drawn from British sources modified by colonial experience. Rebellion by the colonists was sought to be justified by the tyrannical conduct of the mother country, recited in the nervous language of the Declaration of Independence. Those who favored the adoption of the constitution were not unmindful of the hatred of England by the colonists engendered by the war, and hence reference to English constitutions was carefully avoided in the voluminous literature urging the adoption of the constitution of the United States.

Recommended Citation

William W. Potter, JUDICIAL POWER IN THE UNITED STATES, 27 Mich. L. Rev. 1 (1928).
Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol27/iss1/2