It is indeed a substantial grist that the Supreme Court of the United States at the last term of court has ground for students of political science. The first opinion was delivered on November 1, 1909, and the last on May 31, 1910, and the court decided no less than sixty-five constitutional cases. Notice that with caution it is merely said that the court decided no less than that number; for it is often somewhat a matter of opinion whether a case should be classed as constitutional, and it may well be that there are readers who will find that the court exceeded sixty-five. And how were those sixty-five divided? Many turned on more constitutional points than one, and thus an enumeration of the cases bearing on the several clauses of the Constitution will reveal a total exceeding sixty-five. The enumeration, subject to amendment in accordance with each student's views, gives the following results: The Fourteenth Amendment, twenty-four cases; the Commerce Clause, twenty-one; the Obligation of Contracts Clause, eight; whether cases arise “under the laws of the United States,” eight; Full Faith and Credit Clause, five; and sixteen other clauses, from one to four cases each, aggregating twenty-seven.

Through these dull figures some important facts shine distinctly. The Fourteenth Amendment and the Commerce Clause clearly took a vast part of the court's energy, and each of these provisions has to do with the curtailment of functions which prima facie belong to the several states. In other words, the chief feature of this term, as of every recent term, has been a more or less successful attempt of litigants to overthrow state statutes as denials of due process and equal protection or as interferences with interstate commerce.

On May 31, 1910, the Union of South Africa became an accomplished fact. The four provinces of Cape Colony, Natal, the Orange Free State (which bears again its old time name) and the Transvaal are henceforth joined, one might almost say amalgamated, under a single government. They will bear to the central government of the British empire the same relation as the other self-governing colonies—Canada, Newfoundland, Australia and New Zealand. The Empire will thus assume the appearance of a central nucleus with four outlying parts corresponding to geographical and racial divisions, and forming in all a ground plan that seems to invite a renewal of the efforts of the Imperial Federationist. To the scientific student of government the Union of South Africa is chiefly of interest for the sharp contrast it offers to the federal structure of the American, Canadian and other systems of similar historical ground. It represents a reversion from the idea of State rights, and balanced indestructible powers and an attempt at organic union by which the constituent parts are to be more and more merged in the consolidated political unit which they combine to form.

The most serious criticism which we can lay at the door of the Spanish American to-day is his lack of political cohesion. The border provinces are everlastingly rebelling against the decrees of the central government. One hundred years ago, when the Spanish colonies began to secure their independence, they either did not combine or else combining soon fell apart. We naturally wonder why, when they copied our Constitution they did not follow our example and recognize the strength that comes from union. The answer to this and to many other criticisms that may be made is to be found in the history of the Hispanic race and in the geographical conditions that exist in the southern continent.

In criticising South American habits of mind and political tendencies, one must remember that the moral and intellectual characteristics that form the soul of a people are developed in its past and represent a legitimate inheritance from its ancestors. For the motives of its conduct, one must look to its history.

Historically, the Hispanic race was led to develop individualistic rather than coöperative action. In the Middle Ages the forces at work in the peninsula were centrifugal rather than centripetal.

Early in 1910 it was rumored in Manila that an extraordinary session of the Philippine legislature was to be called, in order that the necessary appropriations might be made for the fiscal year 1910–1911. These rumors received no direct confirmation until the proclamation issued by the Governor-General on February 28, calling an extraordinary session to convene on March 28.

The new railroad bill considerably widens the domain of federal control over interstate railroad transportation, and should serve to elevate the Interstate Commerce Commission to a position of correspondingly enhanced influence. New matters have been subjected to the jurisdiction of that body, and its powers in those matters already confided to it are substantially augmented in important particulars. But interesting as are these portions of the new law in themselves, they represent in the main nothing more than extensions and elaborations of principles already firmly established in former Acts regulating interstate commerce. To the student of constitutional law they present no problem that has not been thoroughly discussed in the debates over previous bills or settled by the courts. His attention, however, is at once arrested by the court feature of the new bill, although this occupied a position of secondary importance in the debates in Congress. This newly created Court of Commerce represents a notable innovation in the judicial system of the United States. It is a tribunal unlike any other known to American law, and its establishment warns us that even the judiciary may not wholly escape the effect of the universal tendency toward specialization which is such a prominent feature of modern life.