limitations of the constitution we have protected that right against even
ourselves. That protection cannot be continued and that right cannot be
maintained, except by jealously preserving at all times and under all
circumstances the rule of principle which is eternal over the will of
majorities which shift and pass away.

Democratic absolutism is just as repulsive, and history has shown it to
be just as fatal, to the rights of individual manhood as is monarchical
absolutism.

But it is not necessary to violate the rules of action which we have
established for ourselves in the constitution in order to deal by law with
the new conditions of the time, for these rules of action are themselves
subject to popular control. If the rules are so stated that they are
thought to prevent the doing of something which is not contrary to the
principles of liberty but demanded by them, the true remedy is to be found
in reconsidering what the rules ought to be and, if need be, in restating
them so that they will give more complete effect to the principles they are
designed to enforce. If, as I believe, there ought to be in my own state,
for example, a Workman's Compensation Act to supersede the present
unsatisfactory system of accident litigation, and if the constitution
forbids such a law--which I very much doubt--the true remedy is not to cast
to the winds all systematic self-restraint and to inaugurate a new system
of doing whatever we please whenever we please, unrestrained by declared
rules of conduct; but it is to follow the orderly and ordinary method of
amending the constitution so that the rule protecting the right to property
shall not be so broadly stated as to prevent legislation which the
principle underlying the rule demands.

The difference between the proposed practice of overriding the constitution