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Social Planning Under the Constitution—A Study in Perspectives*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Edward S. Corwin
Edward S. Corwin
Affiliation:
Princeton University
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Extract

Our present discontents have evoked many earnest words on the subject of “social planning.” We are told that “capital can be defended only by constructive programs based on the consideration of social responsibility;” that we are headed for “a frightful cataclysm” unless we adopt “a national plan that will control and guide the basic industries, govern the investment of capital, and keep purchasing power in step with production;” that if we are to avoid revolution, “we dare not sit indefinitely in contemplative inaction;” that “we require a leadership that will help us think less about the theories of individualism and more about the tragedies to individuals,” inasmuch as “men cannot eat words … cannot wear words … cannot trust their old age to words.” In brief, if we are to avoid something worse, we must take some thought for the morrow.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , February 1932 , pp. 1 - 27
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1932

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References

1 For the above sentiments, see, in order, Donham's, DeanBusiness Adrift, p. 101Google Scholar; New York Times, July 20, 1931, Professor Stuart Chase speaking; ibid., June 3, President Butler speaking; ibid., June 22, President Frank speaking.

2 New York Times, Sept. 29, 1931.

3 Quoted by Professor Beard in his article in the Forum, July, 1931.

4 This, I take it, is the general purport of views advanced by Mr. Adams in his recent Epic of America.

5 New York Times, Sept. 23, 1931.

6 I refer to my friend Professor Charles H. Titus's articles in the February and August, 1931, issues of this Review.

7 New York Times, Sept. 17, 1931.

8 See W. J. Ghent's contemporary Our Benevolent Feudalism.

9 See Ernest Barker's Political Thought from Spencer to the Present Day and Francis W. Coker's Organismic Theories of the State.

10 156 U. S. 1; 157 U. S. 429 and 158 U. S. 601; 158 U. S. 564.

11 196 U. S. 375.

12 221 U. S. 1 and 106.

13 134 U. S. 418; 169 U. S. 466.

14 94 U. S. 113.

15 169 U. S. 366.

16 198 U. S. 45.

17 125 U. S. 465; 135 U. S. 100.

18 188 U. S. 321.

19 247 U. S. 251.

20 28 Fed. Cas. No. 16,700.

21 9 Wheat. 1.

22 258 U. S. 495. See also 262 U. S. 1.

23 Collected Legal Papers, pp. 224-26 and 258.

24 Ibid., p. 295.

25 Muller v. Ore., 208 U. S. 412.

26 264 U. S. 504, 534.

27 243 U. S. 188 and 219.

28 233 U. S. 389.

29 227 U. S. 308.

30 252 U. S. 416.

31 261 U. S. 525.

32 193 U. S. 197, 362.

33 282 U. S. 19.

34 243 U. S. 332; 252 U. S. 135 and 170.

35 272 U. S. 365. See also 254 U. S. 300, sustaining a “conservation” statute; also 260 U. S. 393, both opinions.

36 283 U. S. 697, and cases there cited.

37 259 U. S. 20.

38 The Scientific Outlook (1931).

39 James Mackaye, in The Dynamic Universe.

40 “Nature does not obey definite physical laws and physical laws are not sufficient to determine the future of any object, living or not living. This question is vital to mankind for the reason, first urged strongly by Socrates, that if man's actions are determined by physical law, his motives and purposes are ineffective and life becomes meaningless..… It thus becomes possible, in light of modern science, to see once more the vision that Plato saw, of man as master of his own destiny.” Professor Arthur H. Compton, Address before the National Academy of Sciences, New York Times, November 22, 1931. On the other hand, both Einstein and Planck continue to assert the mechanical nature of the universe. Says the latter in his Universe in the Light of Modern Science, recently translated from the German, “All studies dealing with the behavior of the human mind are equally [that is, with physics] compelled to assume the existence of strict causality.” Professor C. G. Darwin, of the University of Edinburgh, a grandson of Charles Darwin, also offers “a most strenuous opposition” to the idea that “the new outlook will remove the well-known philosophical conflict between the doctrines of free-will and determinism..… The question is a philosophic one outside the region of thought of physics, and I cannot see that physical theory provides any new loop-hole.” New York Times, Dec. 14, 1931.

41 283 U. S. 527; 282 U. S. 251; 282 U. S. 216 and 379.

42 Mason, A. T., in 79 Pennsylvania Law Review, at p. 693Google Scholar.

43 Works of George Saville, First Marquess of Halifax (Raleigh, ed.), 211Google Scholar, quoted by ProfessorFrankfurter, in 45 Harvard Law Review, at p. 85Google Scholar.

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