Governor Coolidge was but announcing a long realized fundamental truth when he advised the Legislature of Massachusetts that its function was to "discover" laws. But, whilst human laws cannot repeal economic laws, they are constantly subject to reversal by them—often after infinite harm has been done.
If our suffering from such errors is less than that of other people, it is doubtless because the Supreme Court has always had the power and will to interpose the shield of the Constitution between the ephemeral follies prompted by temporary difficulties, and remedies that endanger freedom. It follows that the preservation of these "discovered" laws is really the great constitutional service of that greatest of Courts. It is hoped, therefore, that a further brief discussion of a few of the fundamental "discovered" and, therefore, constitutional laws, applying to the Lever Act, and founded on natural justice, may be pardoned.
For example, one for which we have both Divine and human authority is that as "no man can serve two masters," and, therefore, be a proper judge in his own case, an Act must be fundamentally wrong and unconstitutional, that, in real substance, first constitutes him the judge in the fixing of the prices of his property; and then appoints the judges to try him, jurors who are also acting as judges in their own cases with diametrically conflicting interests. Lord Chief Justice Hobart, in Day vs. Savage,[1] long since, though not buttressed by our Constitution, gave as an illustration for acts of Parliament void for violation of "natural equity," those making men judges in their own cases, saying: "Even an act of Parliament made against natural equity, as to make a man judge in his
- ↑ Day vs. Savage, Hob. 85-87.
