1900.] HASTINGS—POLICE POWER OF THE STATE 407 
CHAPTER. LV; 
THE PoLicE PoweER IN THE STATE CourTs. 
The police power has so far in these pages been followed through 
twenty-five years in the court where the name originated. The 
conservativeness of legal phraseology is illustrated by the manner 
in which it passed into other fora. In them, even more than in 
the court where it originated, it was to help to realize Hamilton’s 
anticipations as to the * voluminousness of law under our institu- 
tions. Few prophecies, indeed, have been so abundantly fulfilled 
as this one of Hamilton’s. 
The eleven state constitutions adopted during the revolution, 
commencing with that of New Hampshire in 1776, and including 
that of Massachusetts, drawn mainly by John Adams and adopted in 
1780, all contained bills of rights and without an exception sought 
to provide a judiciary as a codrdinate branch of the government. 
Whether or not Holmes vs. Walton, decided in New Jersey in 
1780, was the first judicial determination that judges might treat as 
void legislation not in harmony with the state constitution, at all 
events before the formation of the federal government it was cur- 
rently admitted that such was the case. The existence of such a 
practice and its necessity in all limited constitutions are appealed 
to by * Hamilton in urging the adoption of the federal constitution. 
It was common enough already to excite no surprise when such a 
power was claimed for the federal judiciary. 
That there were limitations on the power of a state legislature 
from the side of the individual citizens was as true as that limits 
were sought to be set up on the side of the federal government. 
The right, however, of the state courts to say when the legislature 
stepped outside its limitation was not established without a 
struggle. None of the state constitutions in express terms gave 
any such power. Indeed, the language used in *some of them 
1 Federalist, No. 78, Lodge ed., p. 490. 
2 Td., No. 78, p. 485. 
3 Const. Mass., Part 1, Art. 20. Const. NV. H., Part 1, Art. 29. 
PROC. AMER. PHILOS. SOC. XXXIX. 163, AA. PRINTED SEPT. 26, 1900 
