Supreme Limitations

With the death of Robert H. Jackson, the Supreme Court lost one of its most able and articulate Justices. In addition Harvard University lost the opportunity of hearing an original and interesting discussion of the Court's role in modern society. Fortunately, however, Justice Jackson's undelivered Godkin Lectures have been published in a small volume which, while written basically for the layman, will be of great importance to serious students of American Constitutional Law.

Justice Jackson's view of the Court's role is notably original because it stresses the limitations, constitutional and practical, of the Judicial branch. The Supreme Court, says Jackson, is not a policy-making branch, and its power has been vastly over-estimated by those whose knowledge and experience of the Court's function is limited to the Roosevelt "court packing" controversy. Broad though the Court's discretion may be in times of national emergency, its power is severely limited in the ordinary course of events.

The causes of limitations lie in the nature of any judicial body, in the intentions of the Founding Fathers, and in the tradition of judicial restraint which judges have placed upon themselves. The Supreme Court, moreover, cannot deal at first hand with the two sections of the Constitution affecting the majority of individuals directly: the taxing power and the war power.

The natural consequence to this admission is that the legislative and executive branches of our government must work out great national questions by themselves without using the Court as a crutch. This condition, Jackson believed, is good. It does, however, imply that if Congress and the President do not exercise their prerogatives with wisdom and restraint, then the Court can do little to save them from the painful consequences.

Novel as this view may be, it is basically a sound one. Having been on the Court for fourteen years, Justice Jackson was in an extremely favorable position to observe the effects of Judicial action on national policy. His book provides a soundly reasoned statement of the Court's position. Unintentionally, he has also written an analysis of judicial character and motivation that make this monograph absorbing reading for anyone who follows the history of the Supreme Court and the personalities who shape its development.