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Show UTAH LABOR NEWS. SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH, OCTOBER I, 1937. OUIl CONSTITUTION by (Continued from page 1) it the states were left free to establish their own qualifications for the suffrage. IIow different the history of this country might have been had the views of the determined minority prevailed in tho Convention, a minority which desired to restrict the national suffrage to owners of land! That plan was defeated largely by the wisdom of Benjamin Franklin. And it thus became feasible to extend the suffrage by state action without any disturbance of national unity. Perhaps it will before long be possible to take the ultimate step and require universal suffrage in all states. Interstate Commerce While in the matter of the suffrage the circumstances made di- versity convenient, the case was different in the. field of commerce between the states and with foreign nations. Therefore, the central commerce, and the states were forbidden to levy duties or to enter into compacts with other states or nations without the consent of These provisions were Congress. vital to the nations growth. Without them, westward expansion would have been impossible and trade w'ould have languished. But the states were not ready to accept without a struggle the implications of this great power of the central government. Many people held the view that the government the Constitution had created was similar to that of the Confederation, a free association of sovereign states and not a rule by a whose word was law to states and the people alike. The issue was debated again and again until the Civil War settled it. Rise of the Courts This issue necessarily embodied itself in cases which came before the courts. Were certain state laws, restrictive of free commerce, constitutional ? Were national law? regulatory of that commerce within the powers of congress ? The notion that laws might be unconstitutional was an old one. And there was no doubt that a law not authorized by the charter under which it was promulgated was void. That the courts might constitute the agency of government to decide these questions was foreshadowed in the Federalist, before the ratification of the Constitution. The doctrine was abhorrent, however, to the extreme states rights advocates, and on double grounds. They rejected the possibility that the United States courts might de- clare laws void and they insisted that the states had the power to declare national laws unconstitutional. Thus, in 1798, Jefferson and Madison prepared the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, which declared the right of those states to ignore the Alien and Sedition Acts as being unconstitutional. These resolutions became the model and example for later states attempts at nullification' directed commercial against legislation such as embargoes and tariffs. The repeal of modification of all these hated laws prevented the issue in super-governme- nt OPEN FORUM Direct Primary Law Explained will be the subject for discussion at the Open Forum on Sunday, October 3, 8 p. m., at the City and County building. M. I. Thompson, editor of the Utah Labor will be the News, principal speaker. In the event Kate- Richards OHare arrives in Salt Lake City Sunday as she is planning, she will be the guest of the Forum and will give a few words of greeting from her grass-root- s campaign among the voters since the congress adjourned. A these instances from reaching dangerous proportions. But as the debate proceeded one fact became clear the position of the Supremo Court as final arbiter. Marshall and States Rights From the beginning that Court has asserted its power over state laws. It had declared several unconstitutional, as being in conflict either with treaties entered into by the central government or with express prohibitions contained in the Constitution. In 1819, in McCulloch v. Maryland, it unanimously denied to the states the right to interfere with powers exercised by the national government. The case involved the power of congress to establish a bank and the right of a state to tax its branches. Chief Justice Marshall upheld the national power and denied that of the states. The Constitution, he pointed out, had made laws enacted in accordance with its terms the supreme law of the land. No state, therefore, could act in hostility to a valid act of congress. And in 1824, in the Steamboat Case (Gibbons v. Ogden), the Court went further and declared that no state could trespass on the field of interstate commerce, in hostility to congressional action. That decision, very popular with the masses, destroyed a monopoly which Fulton and Livingston had obtained of all steamboat traffic on the Hudson river all the way down into New York harbor. It is important to bear in mind, however, that the Court was not concerned with the fact that a monopoly had been created, but only that a state had interposed in a field of activity reserved to congress. And so today, the field of interstate commerce continues to be free from state interference and subject to congressional regulation alone. Liberty and Union The supremacy of the central government over the states received further sanction during the troubled period of Carolinian nullification. South Carolina hated the new protective tariffs. They fostered the manufactures of the North but hampered the South, which bought British wares in exchange for cotton exports. Following the precedent of Jefferson and of certain wild statements which had been made at Hartford during the War of 1812, when New England was chafing under the national policy, Calhoun, while vice president under John Quincy Adams, encouraged talk about the right of a state to refuse to obey a federal law if convinced that that law was unconstitutional. Robert Hayne, senator from South Carolina, supported this viewpoint on the floor of the senate in 1830. He provoked the famous reply from Daniel Webster, Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and Webster then arinseparable. gued, and history has accepted his contention that the power to settle conflicts between laws and the constitution must be lodged somewhere; that to lodge it with the people would produce anarchy and with the states, disunion. He jelieved therefore, tlut the power must bo lodged with tho supreme court. That congress itself might e supreme docs not seem to have occurred to him. So, in the first its existence, half-ccntur- the of y Constitution It moved itself successful. had created a nation strong enough to ay its debts, to wage war, to em-ar- k on internal improvements and to acquire and assimilate new territory. On one subject it was to fail, the problem of slavery. This was a question the convention had eft to the future to solve; and neither congress nor the supreme court was able to solve it satisfactorily. Today another problem confronts the nation, one hardly 'orseen by the framers: the prob-eof the regulation of the private ownership for the common good. )ur Present m passe Page mans land, an area in which neither state nor federal government can act. For this impasse the Fourteenth Amendment is chiefly responsible. It was the the first amendment to bring about any really important change in constitutional structure. The first ten, generally known as the Bill of Rights, can be considered almost part of the original document, so insistent had been the demand for their adoption at the time of the ratification of the Constitution. The Eleventh made it impossible to sue a state in the federal courts; the Twelfth changed the method of selecting the president, the Thirteenth, important though it once was, has little modern significance. But the Fourteenth Amendment, by virtue of its and clauses, has made all state legislation subject to the scrutiny of the federal courts. This is not the purpose for which the amendment was adopted. We must lay at the door of judicial con equal-protecti- on due-proces- responsibility for the the Amendment, detho Negro, has provuse fo him and of to benefit great large corporations. struction the paradox that signed to aid ed of little Due Process It is principally by reason of an interpretation of the clause never dreamt of when, as part of the Fifth Amendment, it was first placed in the Constitution, that this result has come about. Originally, the clause had been interpreted to ensure everyone a fair hearing before either his property could be taken from him or he be sent to jail. The new interpretation permits any one to question laws of (Continued on page C) due-proce- due-proce- ss ss ss USE Pikes Peak During the Constitutions first the restrictions on the dates served in the main to enhance the power of the national government. 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