[Footnote 1: See e.g. the efforts of the life insurance interests: N.Y.
Life Ins. Co. v. Deer Lodge County, 231 U.S., 495.]
The foregoing enumeration by no means covers all the forces which have been at work. In recent years a strong tendency toward centralization and combination has developed, a tendency pervading all the interests and activities of men. Moreover, new views have arisen concerning the functions and scope of government, views challenging the laissez faire doctrines of earlier days and demanding a greater measure of governmental interference with the affairs of the individual. These tendencies, however, are not peculiar to America and lie outside the scope of the present discussion.
In considering the methods by which the change of spirit toward the Constitution has been put into effect, one is struck by the comparatively small part played by the only method contemplated by the framers, viz., constitutional amendment. This method is entirely practicable and fairly expeditious provided a sufficient number favor the change proposed. In the one hundred years prior to the recent Income Tax Amendment, however, only three amendments were enacted (Numbers XIII, XIV, and XV), all of them dealing primarily with the abolition of slavery and the civil rights of the Negro. The only one which need be noticed here is Number XIV, which substituted a federal test of citizenship for state tests and provided that no state should "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." There was nothing new in these prohibitions. In substance they are as old as Magna Charta and were already embodied in most if not all of the state constitutions. The novelty lay in bringing the question, whether a state had in fact denied due process of law to an individual or corporation, within the jurisdiction of the federal courts. From a legal viewpoint this was a change of great importance. To the general student of constitutional government, however, it is less significant than others presently to be mentioned.
Right here it may be proper to notice a new theory of construction of the Constitution, not yet accepted but strenuously urged and containing enormous potentialities. This is the "doctrine of sovereign and inherent power," i.e., the doctrine that powers of national scope for whose exercise no express warrant is found in the Constitution are nevertheless to be implied as inherent in the very fact of sovereignty. This is a very different thing from the famous doctrine of implied powers developed by Chief Justice Marshall—that all powers will be implied which are suitable for carrying into effect any power expressly granted. It is a favorite theory of what may be termed the Roosevelt school. They consider that it is rendered necessary by the discovery of fields suitable for legislative cultivation, lying outside the domain of state power but not within the scope of any express grant of power to the nation. As practical men they abhor the existence of such a constitutional no man's land as nature abhors a vacuum.
During the presidency of Mr. Roosevelt a determined effort was made by the representatives of the Administration[1] to secure the recognition by the Supreme Court of the doctrine of sovereign and inherent power. It was claimed in the brief filed by the Attorney General and Solicitor General that the doctrine had already been applied by the Court in the Legal Tender cases.[2] The effort failed, however, the Court declaring that any such power, if necessary to the nation, must be conferred through constitutional amendment by the people, to whom all powers not granted had been expressly reserved by the Tenth Amendment.
[Footnote 1: In Kansas v. Colorado, 206 U.S., 46.]
[Footnote 2: Bryce makes a statement to the same effect. "The American
Commonwealth," Vol. I, p. 383.]
A method by which the federal power and jurisdiction have been much extended has been the occupation by Congress, through legislation of an exclusive character, of fields where the states had exercised a concurrent jurisdiction. A familiar example is found in federal bankruptcy laws. Another and striking example is the so-called "Carmack Amendment" of the federal Interstate Commerce law. The question of liability for loss or damage to goods in the hands of railways and other carriers had been a fruitful field for state legislatures and state courts. The Carmack Amendment brushed away at a single stroke whole systems of state statutes and judicial decisions (in so far as they affected traffic across state lines) and substituted a uniform system under the control of the federal courts.
The federal power has also been extended at the expense of the states through the use of the treaty-making prerogative. The subjects upon which Congress may legislate are limited by specific enumeration. The treaty-making power, however, is not thus limited. Treaties may cover any subject. It follows that while the Federal Government has no power (for example) to regulate the descent of real property in the various states the treaty-making power permits it, by treaties with foreign nations, to destroy the alienage laws of the states.[1] Another very recent example is afforded by the Migratory Bird Treaty with Great Britain.[2] One will search the Constitution in vain for any grant of power to the Federal Government to enact game laws. Nevertheless, under this treaty, many state game laws have been practically annulled.
[Footnote 1: Hauenstein v. Lynham, 100 U.S., 483.]