sion and practice whereby
their meaning was arrived at by the Constitution's official
interpreters. Naturally, the most important source of material relied
upon comprises relevant decisions of the Supreme Court; but acts of
Congress and Executive orders and regulations have also been frequently
put under requisition. Likewise, proceedings of the Convention which
framed the Constitution have been drawn upon at times, as have the views
of dissenting Justices and occasionally of writers, when it was thought
that they would aid understanding.

That the Constitution has possessed capacity for growth in notable
measure is evidenced by the simple fact of its survival and daily
functioning in an environment so vastly different from that in which it
was ordained and established by the American people. Nor has this
capacity resided to any great extent in the provision which the
Constitution makes for its own amendment. Far more has it resided in the
power of judicial review exercised by the Supreme Court, the product of
which, and hence the record of the Court's achievement in adapting the
Constitution to changing conditions, is our national Constitutional Law.

Thus is explained the attention that has been given in some of these
pages to the development of certain of the broader doctrines which have
influenced the Court in its determination of constitutional issues,
especially its conception of the nature of the Federal System and of the
proper role of governmental power in relation to private rights. On both
these great subjects the Court's thinking has altered at times--on a few
occasions to such an extent as to transcend Tennyson's idea of the law
"broadening from precedent to precedent" and to amount to something
strongly resembling a juridical revolution, bloodless but not wordless.

The first volume of Reports which issued from the Court following
Marshall's death--11 Peters (1837)--signalizes such a revolution, that
is to say, a recasting of fundamental concepts; so does 100 years later,
Volume 301 of the United States Reports, in which the National Labor
Relations Act [The "Wagner Act"] and the Social Security Act of 1935
were sustained. Another considerable revolution was marked by the
Court's acceptance in 1925 of the theory that the word "liberty" in the
Fourteenth Amendment rendered the restrictions of the First Amendment
upon Congress available also against the States.

In the preparation of this volume constant