Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 9.djvu/351

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A NEW NATION. 323 a State statute which deprived the plaintiff of its property without due process of law was held unconstitutional as being in conflict with the Fourteenth Amendment.^ There is one point worth noticing in most of the cases which have come before the United States Supreme Court under these Amendments to the Constitution, and that is that from the very outset until the present time the decisions have been very often by a majority of the court only, and there has constantly been a considerable number of the Justices in favor of giving to these Amendments more of the effect which they seem properly entitled to have. With a further increase throughout the country of what we may call the National sentiment, and a few more changes in the membership of the court, we may at no very distant day ex- pect to see the National Government with a strong arm protecting all the people from oppression by the States.^ Hollis R, Bailey,^ 1 Constitutional History as seen in American Law, pp. 231-233 (1889). Lecture of Charles A. Kent. 2 See Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U. S. 303 (1879) > Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U. S. 356 (1886) ; In re Lee Sing et al., 43 Fed. Rep. 359 {1890) ; Scott v. McNeal, 154 U. S. 34 (1894) ; Portland v. Bangor, 65 Me. 126 (1876) ; The State ex rel. Garra- bad V. Bering, 84 Wise. 585 (1893J; in all which State laws were held unconstitu- tional as being in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. See also The State v. Loomis, 115 Mo. 307 (1893); Leep v. Railway Co., 58 Ark. 408 (1894); Bradley z/. Fallbrook Irrigation Dist., 68 Fed. Rep. 948 (1895); I" ^^ Minor, 69 Fed. Rep. 233 (1895) ; People v. Warren, 34 N. Y. S. 942 (1895) 5 I" ^e Quarles and Butler, 158 U. S. 532(1895). 8 Since the manuscript of the foregoing article was sent to the Editors, the writer has read with interest the article of William H. Dunbar, Esq., published in the Quar- terly Journal of Economics, Vol. IX. No. 3, (April, 1895,) dealing with the same subject, and entitled " State Regulation of Prices and Wages."