Tag Archives: supreme-court

Half a Century of More of the Same

by Connor Boyack, Utah Tenth Amendment Center

On August 23, 1958, 46 Chief Justices from the Supreme Courts of the several states gathered together in Pasadena, California. The event drawing their presence was the Conference of Chief Justices, a regular forum for the highest judges in each state to meet and discuss important issues.

Their 1958 meeting, however, proved to be quite different from any of the other conferences. Ten chief justices had been previously assigned, as part of a committee, to produce a report and resolution to the entire conference for a vote. The subject: federalism.

36 chief justices ultimately voted in support of the resolution and report, which declared that the U.S. Supreme Court “has tended to adopt the role of policy maker without proper judicial restraint”. Eight voted against it, and two abstained.

The report spans several pages, as presented in the October 3, 1958 edition of the U.S. News and World Report (PDF), and until now, has nowhere been made available on the internet. Scanning the statement provides an interesting insight into the tenuous balance of federalism from half a century ago, and supports concern that things have not improved, now decades later.

It should be noted, first, that the chief justices, themselves products of the conventional legal system and general adherents to its philosophy, were not advocating federalism to the extent of more radical action, such as nullification. As one example, they state in their report:

Second, when we turn to the specific field of the effect of judicial decisions on federal-State relationships, we come at once to the question as to where power should lie to give the ultimate interpretation to the Constitution and to the laws made in pursuance thereof under the authority of the United States. By necessity and by almost universal common consent, these ultimate powers are regarded as being vested in the Supreme Court of the United States. Any other allocation of such power would seem to lead to chaos. (emphasis added)

Clearly, interposition and nullification were not even under consideration for these quasi-federalist chief justices. Nevertheless, they were quite concerned with an overreaching federal government whose accumulation of undelegated power seemingly knew no bounds. Here is the text of the resolution which received an overwhelmingly affirmative vote:

Resolved:

1. That this Conference approves the Report of the Committee on Federal-State Relationships as Affected by Judicial Decisions submitted at this meeting.
2. That, in the field of federal-State relationships, the division of powers between those granted to the National Government and those reserved to the State Governments should be tested solely by the provisions of the Constitution of the United States and the Amendments thereto.
3. That this Conference believes that our system of federalism, under which control of matters primarily of national concern is committed to our National Government and control of matters primarily of local concern is reserved to the several States, is sound and should be more diligently preserved.
4. That this Conference, while recognizing that the application of constitutional rules to changed conditions must be sufficiently flexible as to make such rules adaptable to altered conditions, believes that a fundamental purpose of having a written Constitution is to promote the certainty and stability of the provisions of law set forth in such a Constitution.
5. That this Conference hereby respectfully urges that the Supreme Court of the United States, in exercising the great powers confided to it for the determination of questions as to the allocation and extent of national and State powers, respectively, and as to the validity under the Federal Constitution of the exercise of powers reserved to the States, exercise one of the greatest of all judicial powers—the power of judicial self-restraint—by recognizing and giving effect to the difference between that which, on the one hand, the Constitution may prescribe or permit, and that which, on the other, a majority of the Supreme Court, as from time to time constituted, may deem desirable or undesirable, to the end that our system of federalism may continue to function with and through the preservation of local self-government.
6. That this Conference firmly believes that the subject with which the Committee on Federal-State Relationships as Affected by judicial Decisions has been concerned is of continuing importance, and that there should be committee appointed to deal with the subject in the ensuing year.

The proceeding report details several specific cases in which the balance of federalism had been pushed too far in favor of the federal government. Towards the end, the chief justices provide some compelling arguments as the foundation of their concerns: