s of public
policy in the last analysis."[2]

In some cases it is obvious that the question of law is a question of
policy, as in the so-called "political decisions" of the United States
Supreme Court. Such were the decisions formulated by Chief Justice
Marshall on constitutional questions, which made our government what it
is. The difference between "the strict construction" of the Constitution
and the "free construction" was due to a difference of temperament which
has always tended to mark the two great political parties of the
country. So with the Insular cases, which determined the status of the
distant possessions of the United Stales, and which split the Supreme
Court into so many pieces: the question whether the Constitution applied
in all its fullness to Porto Rico and the Philippines was essentially a
political question, though of the largest sort, and therefore a question
of policy.

Finally, there are the arguments of policy which deal with matters of
taste and aesthetic preference. The difficulty with these arguments is
that they do deal with questions of taste, and so fall under the ancient
and incontrovertible maxim, _de gustibus non est disputandum_. Artists
of all varieties and some critics are given to talking as if preferences
in color, in shape, in styles of music, were absolutely right and wrong,
and as if they partook in some way of the nature of moral questions; but
any one who has observed for even twenty years knows that what the
architects of twenty years ago declared the only true style of art is
now scoffed at by them and their successors as hopelessly false. The
cavelike forms of the Byzantine or Romanesque which superseded the
wooden Gothic have in turn given way to Renaissance classic in its
various forms, which now in turn seem on the point of slipping into the
rococo classical of the Ecole des Beaux Arts. In painting, the violent
and spotty impressionism of twenty years ago is paling into the study of
the cool and quiet lights of the Dutchmen of the great period.[3] And at
each stage there are strenuous arguments that the ideas of that
particular live years are the only hope for the preservation of the art
concerned.

The essential difficulty with all such arguments is that the aesthetic
interests to which they appeal are personal, and depend on personal
preferences. Most of us in such matters, having no special knowledge,
and liking some variety of differing styles, modestly give way