ensions of the states.
To-day it is the defender of the states against the encroachments of
national power. Let no one suppose, however, that this is because the
Court itself has faced about. On our revolving planet a ship may be
sailing toward the sun at sunrise and away from the sun in the afternoon
without having changed its course. The Supreme Court has been the most
consistent factor in our governmental scheme. While there have been
differences of viewpoint between liberal constructionists and strict
constructionists among its members, the Court on the whole has steered a
fairly straight course. What has really altered is the environment in
which the Court moves. The earth has been turning on its axis. The frame
of mind of the people who compose states and nation has changed.

At the outset (to cling for a moment to our nautical metaphor) the Court
was obliged to put forth on an unknown sea. Its sailing orders under the
new Constitution were unique. Precedents, those charts and lighthouses
of the judicial mariner, were lacking. Progress was tentative and
groping. Little wonder therefore that at first the business of the Court
was meager and membership in its body seemed less attractive than
membership in the judiciary of a state. Robert Hanson Harrison, one of
President Washington's original appointees to the Supreme bench,
declined to serve, preferring to accept a state judicial office. John
Rutledge, another of the original appointees, resigned after a few
months, preferring the position of Chancellor of his native state to
which he had been chosen. John Jay, the first Chief Justice, resigned to
become Governor of New York, and later declined a reappointment as Chief
Justice in words indicating entire lack of faith in the powers and
future of the Court.

Nevertheless, the first period of the Court was by no means barren of
achievement. A beginning was made. The supremacy of the national
authority under the new Constitution was asserted. So stoutly indeed was
it maintained in the memorable case of _Chisholm v. Georgia_,[1] that
the country was thrown into a ferment. The Court had entertained a suit
against a sovereign state by a private citizen of another state and
rendered a decision in favor of the private citizen. The legislature of
the sovereign state concerned (Georgia) responded by a statute
denouncing the penalty of death against anyone who should presume to
enforce any process upon the judgment within its