this function has been confirmed and even
enlarged by American political custom and practice. The work of finally
interpreting the Federal Constitution has rarely been either conceived
or executed in a merely negative spirit. The construction, which
successive generations of Supreme Court Justices have placed upon the
instrument, has tended to enlarge its scope, and make it a legal
garment, which was being better cut to fit the American political and
economic organism. In its original form, and to a certain extent in its
present form, the Constitution was in many respects an ambiguous
document which might have been interpreted along several different
lines; and the Supreme Court in its official expositions has been
influenced by other than strictly legal and verbal reasons--by
considerations of public welfare or by general political ideas. But such
constructive interpretations have been most cautiously and discreetly
admitted. In proclaiming them, the Supreme Court has usually represented
a substantial consensus of the better legal opinion of the time; and
constructions of this kind are accepted and confirmed only when any
particular decision is the expression of some permanent advance or
achievement in political thinking by the American lawyer. It becomes
consequently of the utmost importance that American lawyers should
really represent the current of national political opinion. The Supreme
Court has been, on the whole, one of the great successes of the American
political system, because the lawyers, whom it represented, were
themselves representative of the ideas and interests of the bulk of
their fellow-countrymen; and if for any reason they become less
representative, a dangerous division would be created between the body
of American public opinion and its official and final legal expositors.
If the lawyers have any reason to misinterpret a serious political
problem, the difficulty of dealing therewith is much increased, because
in addition to the ordinary risks of political therapeutics there will
be added that of a false diagnosis by the family doctor. The adequacy of
the lawyers' training, the disinterestedness of their political motives,
the fairness of their mental outlook, and the closeness of their contact
with the national public opinion--all become matters of grave public
concern.

It can be fairly asserted that the qualifications of the American lawyer
for his traditional task as the official interpreter