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Every court is the product of its time and reflects the predilections of fallible men in black robes. Whatever the orientation of conflicting values, judicial activism involves a paradox at the heart of constitutional orthodoxy: the Supreme Court considered as the mouthpiece of self-interpreting, self-enforcing law.1 While wearing the magical habiliments of the law, Supreme Court justices take sides on controversial issues. In a moment of judicial candor, Justice Robert H. Jackson remarked: "We are not final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final."2 Even those inclined to think of the Supreme Court as "brushed with divinity" do not accept constitutional theology at face value. Few Americans were shocked in 1968 when the GOP presidential candidate made the Court a major political issue, and bluntly announced his determination to restore "law and order" by changing

In 1974, two years before the bicentennial of America's birth as a nation, free government experienced a crisis comparable only to the Civil War. Thoughtful Americans gravely wondered whether there would be anything to celebrate in 1976. Confronted with unprecedented betrayals, the institutions of free government-press, Congress, and courts-responded. Without loss of a drop of blood, America ousted from the highest office in the land a rebellious conspirator to obstruct justice.1 To rid themselves of Britain's tyrannical rule, the colonies resorted to revolution. Thanks to the Founding Fathers' constitutional handiwork that was not necessary on the eve of America's bicentennial. No happenstance, this timely tribute to the resilience of eighteenth-century institutions was the result of careful planning. James Madison, "Father of the Constitution," boasted that the American people "accomplished a revolution which has no parallel in the annals of human society. They reared the fabrics of government which have no models on the face of the globe. They formed the de

1 Chief Justice Marshall in Osborn v. U.S. Bank, 9 Wheat. 738, 866 (1824). Symbolism and magic are, of course, useful in the governing process. But judges tend to insist on their impotence when they are making almost brazen use of their power. "Professions of automatism are most insistent," Professor Thomas Reed Powell observed, "when it is most obvious that they are being honored in the breach rather than in the observance." T. R. Powell, Vagaries and Varieties in Constitutional Interpretation (New York, 1956), 43. See my "Myth and Reali

On September 13, 1974, the Editor and eight members of the Editorial Advisory Board of the Political Science Quarterly met to discuss what they believed would be the long-term implications for American political institutions of the Watergate events, including the resignation of the president. The group gathered in the Deanery of Barnard College, Columbia University. No written presentations were prepared so that the discussion could be spontaneous and free flowing. The transcript of that discussion follows