Government under the Constitution

It is by no means wholly to our advantage that our constitutional law is contained in definitive written documents. The fact that it is thus formulated and rendered fixed and definite has seriously misled us, it is to be feared, as to the true function and efficacy of constitutional law. That law is not made more valid by being written, but only more explicit; it is not rendered more sacred, but only more definite and secure. Written constitutions are simply more or less successful generalizations of political experience. Their tone of authority does not at all alter the historical realities and imperative practical conditions of government. They determine forms, utter distinct purposes, set the powers of the State in definite hierarchy; but they do not make the forms they originate workable, or the purposes they utter feasible. All that must depend upon the men who become governors and upon the people over whom they are set in authority. Laws can have no other life than that which is given them by the men who administer and the men who obey them. Constitutional law affords no exception to the rule. The Constitution of the United States, happily, was framed by exceptional men thoroughly schooled in the realities of government. It consists, accordingly, not of principles newly invented, to be put into operation by means of devices originated for the occasion, but of sound pieces of tested experience. It has served its purpose beneficently, not because it was written, but because it has proved itself accordant in every essential part with tried principles of government -- principles tested by the race for whose use it was intended, and therefore already embedded in their lives and practices. Its strength will be found, upon analysis, to lie in its definiteness and in its power to restrain rather than in any unusual excellence of its energetic parts.

For the right operation of these it has had to depend, like other constitutions, upon the virtue and discretion of the people and their ministers. "The public powers are carefully defined; the mode in which they are to be exercised is fixed; and the amplest securities are taken that none of the more important constitutional arrangements shall be altered without every guarantee of caution and every opportunity for deliberation.... It would seem that, by a wise constitution, democracy may be made nearly as calm as water in a great artificial reservoir. "[D]