AMERICAN PROBLEMS by WILLIAM E.BORAH 1924

HM
182 .WILLIAM E. BORAH
justment of controverted judicial questions
and the administration of justice the courts
and the machinery of the courts, built
up from decade to decade and from century
to century, built of the experience and
the wisdom of a proud and freedom-loving
race, the courts as they are built into our system,
though not perfect, are the most perfect.
They will not always be abreast of the most advanced
opinions in the march of progress, but
that they will in due time mortise and build
into our jurisprudence all that is permanent
and wise and just, all that a settled and digested
public opinion finally indorses, no one
familiar with the history of our jurisprudence
can for a moment doubt. Not only that, but
more than once the courts, both in England
and America, have stood as the sole protector
in the hour of turmoil and strife for the rights
of the weak and the poor, the oppressed and
the hunted, when the executive and the legislature
have yielded to the whip of the strong and
the powerful.
I need recall only one instance
in the hurry of this debate, though I might recall
a hundred, beginning with the days of
Coke's courage, and that is the instance wherein
our own great Supreme Court preserved
against the encroachments of war and the hm>