“The law,” declared Sir Edward Coke, is the “perfection of reason”; although to Mr. Bumble, the beadle of Oliver Twist, it could be, in its baffling workings, “a ass—a idiot.” Much the same argument continues to this day, with the points of view relatively unchanged. No one respects law more, or argues more heatedly about it, than the English-speaking peoples. No one manufactures more of it, in sheer weight, bulk, and complexity, than the Americans. The law has reflected and sometimes accelerated the transition of the United States from a rural republic to a city-dwellers’ democracy. And how has most of this law been made? Not, despite fond popular belief, in our legislatures, but in our courtrooms.

In the past few years, headline after headline has told us of judicial verdicts that banned official prayer from public schools, desegregated the classrooms, ordered state reapportionments that many think will open a new (if not necessarily better) era in American politics, and in recent rulings on confessions and search procedures, drastically altered the balance of power between the policeman and the accused. Some of the court decisions have represented what football writers might call “end runs” around the immovable lines of the Senate; some of them have probably represented the majority will of the country, and some of them probably have not. But they are all law, despite violent debates in newspapers and on the air, congressional speeches, and threats to amend the Constitution.

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