The Supreme Court in United States History
by . Boston: Little, Brown & Co. 1922. Illustrated. 8vo. 3 vols., xviii+540, xii+551, and xii+532 pp. $18.00.
THE award of the Pulitzer Prize to Mr. Warren’s work as the best publication of 1922 in the field of American history placed a distinguished seal upon the excellence of these three volumes. It is seldom that a literary production, dealing with a subject closely related to the interest and activity of a professional class engaged in a specialized and somewhat technical field, can appeal to the general reader. To the legal profession a good history of the Supreme Court of the United States would, of course, always be welcome. Mr. Warren, however, has given us something much better than merely such a history. He was happy in the choice of his title, The Supreme Court in United States History, and his treatment of his subject amply justifies the selection.
Though the reader necessarily acquires a knowledge of the history of the court, of its changing membership during its one hundred and thirty years of existence, of the personality and character of its chief and many of its associate justices, all this is subordinate and incidental to the author’s purpose to set forth the place and influence of the court in the history of the United States. This purpose has been effected with rare skill. Mr. Warren’s literary style is free from technical or professional quality, and the story is told in a manner so delightful to follow as to provide it with much of the fascination of a novel.
At each of the many important points in American history in which the activity of the court has been engaged, Mr. Warren not only describes, in language intelligible to the general reader, the case or cases which the court judicially decided, but gives a word picture of the argument, of the participants in the argument, even of the scene and persons in the courtroom. He illustrates, partly in the text and still more fully in the notes, the main narrative with a wealth of quotations from contemporary letters and records of every kind, which enable the reader almost to breathe the atmosphere and to visualize the people of the periods he is describing. All this bears eloquent testimony to the author’s great industry and wide reading.
His treatment of the conflict between greater or less centralization of power in the national government is of special significance at this moment. His narrative shows that the issue, looked at broadly, has been continuous. It seems, however, to indicate to a student of the form in which the question presents itself in more recent years that in all the earlier period of the country’s history the expansion of national power and the corresponding curtailment of State jurisdiction related to matters either of foreign or of interstate commerce, both of which were matters with which the Federal Government was expressly authorized to deal.
The far-reaching effect of the decisions of the court was in general to ensure the most complete freedom of trade among the States and a necessary uniformity in the conduct of foreign commerce.
Mr. Warren naturally and properly treats with much greater brevity the relation of the court during the period of chief justiceships of Fuller and White as ‘too recent and too clearly within the view of living man to warrant detailed description.’ When such an account can be written — let us hope by Mr. Warren — it will be interesting to see whether this controversy between centralized and distributed jurisdiction will not relate rather to matters affecting individual rights and liberty than to questions of a commercial nature.
It may not be amiss to add that, in spite of the identity of surnames, the present reviewer of this book is not a kinsman of its author.
BENTLEY W. WARREN.