ABSTRACT
Early in our history, that shrewd observer of things American, Alexis de Tocqueville, noted that in our system political questions tend to become judicial questions. Operating under a national constitution whose many grants of power and rights were so general as to invite debate over their meaning, with a judiciary making ultimate decisions about their meaning, and passionately involved with being free men, the American people early established the practice of transmuting political questions into litigation. Too, our variety of people contributed immensely to this profusion of litigation over the meaning of liberty. Thus, "I'll see you in court!" has been just as much a part of America's private history as "Remember Pearl Harbor!" is of its public history.
