The Search for Uniformity of Law

J. A. C. Grant

American Political Science Review, 1938, vol. 32, issue 6, 1082-1098

Abstract: It has been said that the concept of “formal perfection is in itself a thing so impressive, so fascinating, so pleasing, that it tends to camouflage a defect of content and then to deceive by a kind of agreeable dazzling of the mind.” Apparently John Fiske was basking in the light of this concept when he characterized federal government as “the sublime conception of a nation in which every citizen lives under two complete and well-rounded systems of law … moving one within the other, noiselessly and without friction.” Surely, only a childlike faith in the efficacy of mere mechanics controlled by written constitutions could have closed his ears to the clatter arising even then within our American federal system. The concept of federalism may be a lofty one; its practice seems often to be on a more mundane plane.

Date: 1938
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