The Popular Review of Judicial Decisions upon constitutional questions;
that is to say, a provision, under which, when a court of last resort
has decided that a particular law is invalid, because in conflict with
a constitutional provision, the law may nevertheless be made valid by a
popular vote.

Some of these methods have been made a part of the constitutional system of
a considerable number of our states. They have been accompanied invariably
by provisions for very short and easy changes of state constitutions, and,
so long as they are confined to the particular states which have chosen to
adopt them, they may be regarded as experiments which we may watch with
interest, whatever may be our opinions as to the outcome, and with the
expectation that if they do not work well they also will be abandoned. This
is especially true because, since the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment
to the Constitution, the states are prohibited from violating in their own
affairs the most important principles of the National Constitution. It
is not to be expected, however, that new methods and rules of action in
government shall become universal in the states and not ultimately bring
about a change in the national system. It will be useful, therefore, to
consider whether these new methods if carried into the national system
would sacrifice any of the essentials of that system which ought to be
preserved.

The Constitution of the United States deals in the main with essentials.
There are some non-essential directions such as those relating to the
methods of election and of legislation, but in the main it sets forth the
foundations of government in clear, simple, concise terms. It is for this
reason that it has stood the test of more than a century with but slight
amendment, while the modern state constitutions, into which a multitude of