Constitutional Law in 1925–1926: The Constitutional Decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States in the October Term, 1925

The Supreme Court of the United States during its 1925 term seems to have taken a vacation from the solution of major constitutional problems. Its activities provided very little newspaper copy. Most of the more important decisions could have been pretty accurately forecast upon the basis of previous adjudications, while the constitutional questions raised which could be deemed in any sense novel related to more or less technical or trivial matters. A considerable number of the more interesting cases dealt merely with matters of statutory construction and did not present constitutional issues at all. This comparative dullness of the judicial year's work is in sharp contrast with the achievements of the preceding term of 1924, in which at least six cases of genuinely first-rate importance were decided; while the Court has begun its 1926 term by handing down its epoch-making decision in the Myers case relating to the President's power of removal, and has followed it by the far-reaching ruling in the municipal zoning law case. This absence of judicial fireworks in the 1925 term may well serve to emphasize two facts sometimes overlooked in an appraisal of the work of the Supreme Court. The first is that in any judicial year an overwhelming proportion of the work of that tribunal is and must necessarily be of a humdrum and inconspicuous variety; useful and important in the sense that technical, detailed, and even trivial questions need to be answered authoritatively, but certainly not spectacular.