The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation

nstitutional instrument, of some act of governmental power, State or national, has been challenged. This function, conveniently labelled "Judicial Review," involves the power and duty on the part of the Court of pronouncing void any such act which does not square with its own reading of the constitutional instrument. Theoretically, therefore, it is a purely juristic product, and as such does not alter the meaning. To those who hold this theory, the Court does not elaborate the instrument, as legislative power might; it elucidates it, bringing forth into the light of day, as it were, what was in the instrument from the first.

In the case of judicial review as exercised by the Supreme Court of the United States in relation to the national Constitution, its preservative character has been at times a theme of enthusiastic encomium, as in the following passage from a speech by the late Chief Justice White, made shortly before he ascended the Bench:

... The glory and ornament of our system which disti