In 1909 the Illinois Supreme Court held void the loan-shark act regulating the assignment of future wages as security for money borrowed and requiring the assignment to be recorded and signed by the wife. Again the reason was that the “life, liberty, or property” clause of the state constitution was violated: Massie v. Cessna, 239 Ill. 352 (1909). But the United States Supreme Court has sustained a similar act passed in Massachusetts on the ground that it did not infringe the “life, liberty, or property” clause of the fourteenth amendment: Mutual Loan Company v. Martell, 222 U.S. 225 (1911).
The Illinois Supreme Court has also held void, as infringing the “life, liberty, or property” clause of the state constitution, the following acts: (a) An act penalizing employers in the importation of workmen from another state by reason of deceit touching the matter of the existence of a strike or the sanitary condition of the employment: Josma v. Western Steel Car Co., 249 Ill. 508 (1911); compare, however, Williams v. Fears, 179 U.S. 270; (b) An act providing that no public contractor shall employ alien labor on any public work: City of Chicago v. Hulbert, 205 Ill. 346 (1903). But in Atkin v. Kansas, 191 U.S. 207 (1903), the United States Supreme Court held valid an act of Kansas making it a criminal offense for a public contractor to permit or require an employee to perform labor upon public work in excess of eight hours each day; (c) The miners’ washroom act, requiring owners of mines to provide a washroom at the top of the mine for the use of the miners: Starne v. The People, 222 Ill. 189 (1906); (d) An act prohibiting more than six persons sleeping in one room in a lodging-house: Bailey v. The People, 190 Ill. 28 (1901); (e) An act prescribing an eight-hour day for women in certain occupations: Ritchie v. The People, 155 Ill. 98 (1895). This case was approved in Ritchie v. Wayman, 244 Ill. 509 (1911), which, however, held a ten-hour labor law for women in certain occupations valid, following the ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court sustaining a similar act passed in Oregon: Muller v. Oregon, 208 U.S. 412 (1908). It seems entirely probable from its opinion in the last-mentioned case that the United States Supreme Court would have held valid the act condemned by the Illinois Supreme Court in Ritchie v. The People, supra.
[26] “The proposal for a revived Second Chamber was, on the contrary, carried with an unexpected degree of unanimity. The Protector pressed it strongly upon the officers. ‘I tell you,’ he said, ‘that unless you have some such thing as a balance we cannot be safe. Either you will encroach upon our civil liberties by excluding such as are elected to serve in Parliament—next time for aught I know you may exclude four hundred—or they will encroach upon our religious liberty. By the proceedings of this Parliament you see they stand in need of a check or balancing power, for the case of James Naylor might happen to be your case. By the same law and reason they punished Naylor they might punish an Independent or an Anabaptist. By their judicial power they fall upon life and member, and doth the Instrument enable me to control it? This Instrument of Government will not do your work.’”—J. A. R. Marriott, Second Chambers, p. 38.
[27] “A majority in a single assembly, when it has assumed a permanent character—when composed of the same persons habitually acting together, and always assured of victory in their own House—easily becomes despotic and overweening, if released from the necessity of considering whether its acts will be concurred in by another constituted authority. The same reason which induced the Romans to have two consuls, makes it desirable there should be two chambers; that neither of them may be exposed to the corrupting influence of undivided power, even for the space of a single year.”
[28] “Of all the forms of government that are possible among mankind I do not know any which is likely to be worse than the government of a single omnipotent democratic chamber.”
[29] “What, then, is expected from a well constituted Second Chamber is not a rival infallibility, but an additional security. It is hardly too much to say that, in this view, almost any Second Chamber is better than none.”
[30] “With a perfect Lower House it is certain that an Upper House would be scarcely of any value. If we had an ideal House of Commons perfectly representing the nation, always moderate, never passionate, abounding in men of leisure, never omitting the slow and steady forms necessary for good consideration, it is certain that we should not need a higher chamber. The work would be done so well that we should not want any one to look over or revise it. And whatever is unnecessary in government, is pernicious.... But though beside an ideal House of Commons the Lords would be unnecessary, and therefore pernicious, beside the actual House a revising and leisured legislature is extremely useful, if not quite necessary.”
[31] “The main end for which a Senate is constructed [is] that all legislative measures may receive a second consideration by a body different in character from the primary representative assembly, and if possible superior or supplementary in intellectual qualifications.”
[32] See J. A. R. Marriott, “History of the Canadian Second Chamber” in Second Chambers, pp. 145 ff.
[33] The phrase “recall of judicial decisions” is unfortunate, since it implies that the judicial function is taken over by the electorate and the judicial decision reversed, when all that is done is to amend the constitution so that the basis for the judicial decision is taken away in all subsequent litigation. The better phrase, it is believed, is the one used in the text, namely, “steam-rollering the judicial veto.” See Albert M. Kales, “The Recall of Judicial Decisions,” Illinois State Bar Association Proceedings, 1912, pp. 203-18; Herbert Pope, “The Recall of Judicial Decisions—A Criticism,” 7 Illinois Law Review, p. 149.