e courts must be deprived of the power which
they now have to declare laws null and void. Popular government can not
really exist so long as judges who are politically irresponsible have
power to override the will of the majority. The democratic movement will
either deprive the judicial branch of the government of its political
powers or subject it to the same degree of popular control applied to
other political organs. The extension of direct nomination and recall to
the members of our state judiciary would deprive the special interests
of the power to use the courts as the means of blocking the way to
popular reforms. In any democratic community the final interpreter of
the constitution must be the majority. With the evolution of complete
popular government, then, the judicial veto must disappear, or the
court must become a democratic body.

It is through our state governments that we must approach the problem of
reforming the national government. Complete control of the former will
open the door that leads to eventual control of the latter. Democratize
the state governments, and it will be possible even to change the
character of the United States Senate. With a state legislature directly
nominated and subject to removal through the use of the recall, it will
be possible to deprive that body of any real power in the selection of
United States senators. Under these conditions the legislature would
merely ratify the candidate receiving a majority of the popular vote
just as the electoral college has come to ratify the popular choice of
the President. In this way direct nomination and direct election of
United States senators could be made really effective while at the same
time preserving the form but not the substance of election by the state
legislatures.[196]

This would make possible that much needed separation of state and
municipal from national politics. Candidates for the state legislature
are now nominated and elected largely with reference to the influence of
that body upon the composition of the United States Senate. This has a
tendency to, and in fact does, make state legislation in no small degree
a by-product of senatorial elections. By divesting the legislature of
this function, it would cease to be, as it is now, one of the organs of
the Federal government, and in assuming its proper role of a local
legislative body, it would become in fact what it has hardly been even
in theory--a body mainly interest