PREFACE. THE wide interest in Constitutional Law may cause this volume to reach some readers unacquainted with the case system of study. Hence it seems necessary to explain that this collection of cases is intended not to accompany a treatise but to serve as the basis for independent work. Before each class exercise the student is expected to master fifteen or twenty pages, fitting himself to state how the problems arose and to express clearly the doctrines necessarily involved in the decisions. There are several methods of studying cases effectively. One successful method is to mark in distinctive ways the essential facts of each case, the passages indicating the points upon which the decision turned, and other passages worthy of comment, and then to place at the beginning of the case a short syllabus, giving in a sentence or two the reader's own phrasing of the ratio decidendi. Thus before work in the classroom the student puts much of himself into the book. The margins permit making notes of classroom discussion. Besides, if there be time and inclination for further study, by inserting an occasional sheet of interleaving paper the volume may be enriched with matter derived from cases cited in the footnotes or discovered by the student himself. There is no reason why use should not be made of digests, treatises, and other aids to investigation; and with or without those collateral aids the volume may be made an adequate record of the student's work and the basis for that short treatise which many a student prepares for himself. It is no waste to annotate a volume in the way described. Thus grew Coke's First Institute, known even to laymen as Coke upon Littleton; and the permanent record of either a student's or a lawyer's work in Constitutional Law may well take the form of annotations upon decisions. The literature is so vast that this collection presents only the famous cases and such of the others as may serve the ordinary purposes of the classroom. The reader with scholarly tastes is expected, as has already been indicated, to make investigations of his own; and to that end he should search the original reports and make large use of the celebrated collection which for twenty years formed the basis of the instruction at this Law School Thayer's Cases on Constitutional Law. In editing the cases, new statements have usually been prepared, and, save as otherwise indicated, arguments of counsel have been omitted. Omissions in opinions have been indicated by dots. In the first chapter of Book I. an attempt has been made to reproduce punctuation and capitalization exactly, to the end that the reader may ascertain what importance attaches to changes in capitalizing Constitution, Congress, and other words. The same attempt has been made in printing the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution; and it is hoped that the student will examine those documents with unusual care, ascertaining for himself whether the Constitution was a revision of the Articles, and forming the habit of beginning every constitutional investigation by examining the words, context, and origin of the pertinent provision of the Constitution. It is pleasant to recall that the year in which this volume appears marks the completion of a century and a quarter of active service by the United States Supreme Court, and that consequently this is an appropriate time to publish a collection of cases which aims to promote intelligent appreciation of the way in which the labors of that court have developed the chief contribution of our country to law and to the science of government the Constitutional Law of the United States. EUGENE WAMBAUGH. LAW SCHOOL OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY, April 9, 1915. CHAPTER III. THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, THE TERRITORIES, |
