HKB
Exclusion of Extra-Constitutional Tests
A fifth maxim of constitutional interpretation runs to the effect that the Courts are concerned only with the constitutionality of legislation and not with its motives, policy or wisdom, or with its concurrence with natural justice, fundamental principles of government, or spirit of the Constitution.[280] In various forms this maxim has been repeated to such an extent that it has become trite and has increasingly come to be incorporated in constitutional cases as a reason for fortifying a finding of unconstitutionality. Through absorption of natural rights doctrines into the text of the Constitution, the Court was enabled to reject natural law and still to partake of its fruits, and the same is true of the laissez faire principles incorporated in judicial decisions from about 1890 to 1937. Such protective coloration is transparent in such cases as Lochner v. New York[281] and United States v. Butler.[282]
Disallowance by Statutory Interpretation
A sixth principle of constitutional interpretation designed by the courts to discourage invalidation of statutes is that if at all possible the courts will construe the statute so as to bring it within the law of the Constitution.[283] At times this has meant that a statute was construed so strictly in order to avoid constitutional difficulties that its efficacy was impaired if not lost.[284] A seventh principle closely related to the preceding one is that in cases involving statutes, portions of which are valid and other portions invalid, the courts will separate the valid from the invalid and throw out only the latter unless such portions are inextricably connected.[285] Sometimes statutes expressly provide for the separability of provisions, but it remains for the courts in the last resort to determine whether the provisions are separable.[286]
Stare Decisis in Constitutional Law
An eighth limitation on the power of the federal courts to invalidate legislation springs from the principle of stare decisis, a limitation which has been progressively weakened since the Court proceeded to correct "a century of error" in Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co.[287] Because of the difficulty of amending the Constitution the Court has long taken the position that it will reverse its previous decisions on constitutional issues when convinced they are grounded on error more quickly than in other types of cases in which earlier precedents are not absolutely binding.[288] The "constitutional revolution" of 1937 produced numerous reversals of earlier precedents as other sections of this study disclose, and the process continues. In Smith v. Allwright,[289] which reversed Grovey v. Townsend,[290] Justice Reed cited fourteen cases decided between March 27, 1937, and June 14, 1943, in which one or more earlier decisions of constitutional questions were overturned. Although the general effect of the numerous reversals of precedent between 1937 and 1950 was to bring judicial interpretation more generally into accord with the formal text of the Constitution, and to dispose of a considerable amount of constitutional chaff, Justice Roberts was moved to say in the Allwright case that frequent reversals of earlier decisions tended to bring adjudications of the Supreme Court "into the same class as a restricted railroad ticket, good for this day and train only."[291] A ninth limitation which has nothing to do with statutory or constitutional construction as such and which is altogether precautionary is that the Court will declare no legislative act void unless a majority of its full membership so concurs.[292]