INTRODUCTION


It is my purpose in this Introduction to the _Constitution of the United
States, Annotated_ to sketch rapidly certain outstanding phases of the
Supreme Court's interpretation of the Constitution for the illustration
they may afford of the interests, ideas, and contingencies which have
from time to time influenced the Court in this still supremely important
area of its powers and of the comparable factors which give direction to
its work in the same field at the present time.

As employed in this country, Constitutional Law signifies a body of
rules resulting from the interpretation by a high court of a written
constitutional instrument in the course of disposing of cases in which
the validity, in relation to the constitutional instrument, of some act
of governmental power, State or national, has been challenged. This
function, conveniently labelled "Judicial Review," involves the power
and duty on the part of the Court of pronouncing void any such act which
does not square with its own reading of the constitutional instrument.
Theoretically, therefore, it is a purely juristic product, and as such
does not alter the meaning. To those who hold this theory, the Court
does not elaborate the instrument, as legislative power might; it
elucidates it, bringing forth into the light of day, as it were, what
was in the instrument from the first.

In the case of judicial review as exercised by the Supreme Court of the
United States in relation to the national Constitution, its preservative
character has been at times a theme of enthusiastic encomium, as in the
following passage from a speech by the late Chief Justice White, made
shortly before he ascended the Bench: