26 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
the higher law, as against all lesser laws or judicial decisions. What, 
therefore, has been supposed to be the most unique feature of the 
American supreme court, is really only another adaptation from the 
past, and rests upon colonial and English precedents.” 
IX. 
Cases involving constitutional questions may be tried in any of the 
superior courts of the provinces, with the right of appeal to the federal 
supreme court, and finally, under certain limitations, to the English 
-privy council. The judgments of the judicial committee have been 
always received with the respect due to the learning of so high a court, 
and, on the whole, have given satisfaction, though there have been occa- 
sions when the lay, and even the legal mind, has been a little perplexed 
by somewhat contradictory decisions, arising from the difficulty of the 
judges to comprehend what are largely provincial issues. For instance, 
in cases relating to the sale of intoxicating liquors, the jurisdiction was 
at first declared to be in the dominion government, but subsequently in 
the provincial authorities, with the obvious result of leaving a trouble- 
some issue more complicated than ever. - The tendency of the judgments 
of the courts has been towards strengthening the provincial entities and 
minimizing, to a certain extent, the powers of the central authorities. 
For instance, the judicial committee have gone so far as to lay it down 
most emphatically : 
“That when the imperial parliament gave the provincial legislatures 
exclusive authority to make laws on certain subjects enumerated in the 
act of union, it conferred powers not in any sense to be exercised by 
delegation from,.or as agents of, the imperial parliament; but authority 
as plenary and as ample within the limits prescribed by the section 92, 
as the imperial parliament, in the plenitude of its power, possesses and 
could bestow,” 
The consequence has been the very opposite of the decisions, as a 
whole, of the supreme court of the United States, where the late Chief 
Justice Marshall did much to mould the constitution in the direction of 
enlarging the scope of the powers expressly given to the national govern- 
ment. It is a question whether the judicial committee, however ably 
constituted, would not find its usefulness increased by the membership 
of a great colonial lawyer, who would bring to his duties not only legal 
acumen and judicial fairness, but “a comprehension of the nature and 
methods of government which one does not expect from European judges 
who act within the narrow path traced for them by ordinary statutes.” ! 

CE] 
? Professor Bryce in ‘‘ The American Commonwealth,” vol. 2, p. 1. Since this 
passage was written, the imperial pirliament has passed an act providing for the 
appointment of colonial judges to the committee, but the colonies must provide sal- 
