Abstract

The Changing Supreme Court

This article focuses on the book "The Business of the Supreme Court," written by Felix Frankfurter and James M. Landis. Professor Felix Frankfurter of Harvard and his younger colleague, professor James Landis, undertake to tell through this book, how the U.S. Supreme Court has accomplished its task. The facts are thoroughly and accurately ascertained, the presentation is interesting and vigorous. The character of the Supreme Court's business is changing under our eyes and in an illuminating table we are shown how different it has become. It is ceasing to be a common law court and is almost wholly absorbed in "interpreting" statutes and the constitution. Doubtless in the future new differentiations will be necessary. There is no uniform technique of "interpretation," divorced from subject-matter.