believe with an altogether impossible test. Compared with the
Constitutional Document, with its 7,000 words more or less, the bulk of
material requiring to be noticed in the preparation of an annotation of
this kind is simply immense. First and last, the Court has probably
decided well over 4,000 cases involving questions of constitutional
interpretation. In many instances, to be sure, the constitutional issue
was disposed of quite briefly. In some instances, on the other hand, the
published report of the case runs to more than 200 pages.[9] In the
total, it is probable that at least 50,000 pages of the United States
Supreme Court Reports are devoted to Constitutional Law topics.

Nor is this the whole story, or indeed the most important part of it.
Even more striking is the fact that the vast proportion of cases forming
the corpus of national Constitutional Law has stemmed, or has purported
to stem, from four or five brief phrases of the Constitutional Document,
the power "to regulate ... commerce among the States," impairment of
"the obligation of contracts" (now practically dried up as a formal
source of constitutional law), deprivation of "liberty or property
without due process of law" (which phrase occurs both as a limitation on
the National Government and, since 1868, on the States), and out of four
or five doctrines which the Constitution is assumed to embody. The
latter are, in truth, the essence of the matter, for it is through these
doctrines, and under the cover which they afford, that outside
interests, ideas, preconceptions, have found their way into
Constitutional Law, have indeed become for better, for worse, its
leavening element.

That is to say, the effectiveness of Constitutional Law as a system of
restraints on governmental action in the United States, which is its
primary _raison d'etre_, depends for the most part on the effectiveness