l limitation upon legislative power than the
submission of the question to an independent and impartial court. The
courts are not parties to the transactions upon which they pass. They are
withdrawn by the conditions of their office from participation in business
and political affairs out of which litigations arise. Their action is
free from the chief dangers which threaten the undue extension of power,
because, as Hamilton points out in The Federalist, they are the weakest
branch of government: they neither hold the purse, as does the legislature,
nor the sword, as does the executive. During all our history they have
commanded and deserved the respect and confidence of the people. General
acceptance of their conclusions has been the chief agency in preventing
here the discord and strife which afflict so many lands, and in preserving
peace and order and respect for law.

Indeed in the effort to emasculate representative government to which I
have already referred, the people of the experimenting states have greatly
increased their reliance upon the courts. Every new constitution with
detailed orders to the legislature is a forcible assertion that the people
will not trust legislatures to determine the extent of their own powers,
but will trust the courts.

Two of the new proposals in government, which have been much discussed,
directly relate to this system of constitutional limitations made effective
through the judgment of the courts. One is the proposal for the Recall of
Judges, and the other for the Popular Review of Decisions, sometimes spoken
of as the Recall of Decisions.

Under the first of these proposals, if a specified proportion of the voters
are dissatisfied with a judge's decision they are empowered to require that
at the next election, or at a special election called for that purpose,
the question shall be presented to the electors whether the judge shall be
permitted to continue in office or some other specified person shall be
substituted in his place. This ordeal differs radically from the popular
judgment which a judge is called upon to meet at the end of his term of
office, however short that may be, because when his term has expired he is
judged upon his general course of conduct while he has been in office and
stands or falls upon that as a whole. Under the Recall a judge may be
brought to the bar of public judgment immediately upon the rendering of a
particular decision which excites public inter