Constitutional Law in 1910–1911: The Constitutional Decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States in the October Term, 1910

Extract

As was indicated in a preceding article, the chief feature of the judicial year 1909–1910, from the point of view of Constitutional Law, was that the decisions, though numerous, were comparatively unimportant. On the contrary the chief feature of the constitutional decisions of the judicial year 1910–1911 was that an unusual number of them appeared to the public to be of great interest and consequence. Hence it is advisable to deal with the judicial year 1910–1911 in a manner wholly different from that which was adopted with its predecessor. The article covering the judicial year 1909–1910 collected all the constitutional cases in the Supreme Court of the United States, and, with the briefest possible indication of the point decided, distributed them among the several clauses of the Constitution which they served to annotate. For the judicial year 1910–1911, on the other hand, the plan adopted is to confine attention almost wholly to the few decisions making the year memorable. Thus it becomes possible to give a rather full statement of those few decisions and now and then to add comments.