iple as follows: "It is for the
legislature to determine from time to time the occasion and what laws
are necessary or expedient for the defense and benefit of the people;
and however inconvenienced, restricted, or even damaged particular
persons and corporations may be, such general laws are to be held
valid unless there can be pointed out some provision in the State or
United States Constitution which clearly prohibits them."

Further, it is a maxim of the judiciary, from the beginning and now,
that no statute should be refused effect unless clearly contrary to
some provision of the constitution,--unless the conflict is evident
beyond a reasonable doubt. This is a maxim, a canon of interpretation,
that courts always have in mind and apply in considering the question
of the constitutionality of a statute.

Thus scrupulous are the courts to keep within their proper sphere, to
respect the limits of their powers. If the legislatures would be
equally scrupulous, would themselves refrain from infringing on those
rights and liberties of the citizen guaranteed by the constitution,
there would be less restriction, less friction, less turmoil, less
need of the judicial check, less injustice.

But the complaints against the courts are not all because of their
holding statutes unconstitutional. Many have felt that courts
sometimes erred in having too much respect for the legislative power
and because of that respect have allowed constitutional rights and
liberties to be sacrificed at the behest of majorities and often at
the behest of active, interested minorities more insistent than the
inert majority. The decision of the United States Supreme Court in the
_Charles River Bridge_ case, 11 _Peters_ 420, was mourned by such men
as Webster, Kent, Story, and others as breaking down the safeguards of
the constitution. The decision in the _Slaughter House_ cases was
regarded by many able jurists as ignoring that provision of the XIVth
amendment to the Federal Constitution forbidding any denial to any one
of the equal protection of the laws. The _Elevator_ cases, holding
that elevators were public utilities and therefore subject to public
control as to charges for service, though the owners had no special
franchise, no part of public power, are even now thought to have made
a wide breach in the constitutional barriers against the invasion of
private rights. The decision in the _Chinese Deportation_ cases, 149
U. S. 698, shocked the s