State Constitutional Law in 1939–19401

Charles Aikin

American Political Science Review, 1940, vol. 34, issue 4, 700-718

Abstract: During the past year, the state appellate courts have reviewed state legislation with a degree of restraint more marked than in the preceding year. The present attitude of the courts toward the work of legislatures may be in part the result of a change in court personnel. It is also both possible and probable that judges have been impressed by the more tolerant or liberal attitude of the United States Supreme Court. Finally, a few of the judges may have become aware of the fact that the times demand the relinquishment of an assumed judicial “supremacy” and the examination of legislative and administrative action under specific constitutional provisions in the light of social and economic realities. At all events, judicial review in the grand manner has given way to a more vigorous application of technical constitutional requirements. Courts are tending to emphasize procedure rather than substance; review appears to be at once more tolerant and more precise; decisions turn on narrower grounds, premises are less sweeping. When applied to state constitutions, this tendency means something quite different from what it means when applied to the national constitution.This tendency may perhaps be regarded as charged with possible evil results for the courts. Although state constitutions are, in most cases, so detailed and diverse that no actual diminution of the courts' discretionary powers need result, and although to a successful litigant it makes little difference whether a statute is invalidated for want of due process or for want of a proper title or enacting clause, it is difficult to conceive of many things that will bring the courts more quickly into popular disrepute than an exaggeration of constitutional technicalities.

Date: 1940
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