ection Code requiring that a petition for the nomination of
candidates of a new political party be signed by 25,000 voters including
at least 200 from each of at least 50 of the States' 102 counties, for
it went on to sustain the provision in a brief _per curiam_ opinion. In
Ludecke _v._ Watkins,[226] the Court held, as it had earlier, that the
determination of the cessation of a state of war is a question for the
political branch of the Government and not for the courts. Nevertheless,
the Court actually found a state of war to exist between the United
States and Germany after the end of hostilities, and ruled that an enemy
alien is not entitled to judicial review in a deportation proceeding.
Very recently in South _v._ Peters,[227] the Court refused to pass upon
the validity of the county unit scheme used in Georgia for the
nomination of candidates in primary elections.

ADVISORY OPINIONS

Perhaps no portion of Constitutional Law pertaining to the judiciary has
evoked such unanimity as the rule that the federal courts will not
render advisory opinions. In 1793 the Supreme Court refused to grant the
request of President Washington and Secretary of State Jefferson to
construe the treaties and laws of the United States pertaining to
questions of international law arising out of the wars of the French
Revolution. After convening the Court which considered the request,
Chief Justice Jay replied to President Washington concerning the
functions of the three departments of government: "These being in
certain respects checks upon each other, and our being Judges of a Court
in the last resort, are considerations which afford strong arguments
against the propriety of our extra-judicially deciding the questions
alluded to, especially as the power given by the Constitution to the
President, of calling on the heads of departments for opinions, seems to
have been _purposely_ as well as expressly united to the _Executive_
departments."[228] Since 1793 the Court has frequently reiterated the
early view that the federal courts organized under article III cannot
render advisory opinions or that the rendition of advisory opinions is
not a part of the judicial power of the United States.[229]

Even in the absence of this early precedent, the rule that
constitutional courts will render no advisory opinions would have
logically emerged from the rule subsequently developed, that
constitutional courts can only decide cases and controversie