ABSTRACT
THE recent very general acceptance of the view that the constitutionality of the Tennessee Anti-Evolution-Teaching Law would eventually be tested in the United States Supreme Court is a striking commentary upon the progress we have made away from the principles of government believed in by the framers of the Constitution. Those framers of 1787 believed that they should impose few limitations upon the authority of the State Legislatures, except such as were necessary from a National standpoint. Matters of local interest, the relations between a State and its own citizens, were jealously preserved against National interference, protection, or restriction. Clearly, if anything can be said to be purely a local matter and of no National concern, it must be the relation of the State to subjects to be taught in its schools. Certainly, if anything has no need of National protection, it is the relation between a State and its own pupils. Yet owing to the existence of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and to the constantly expanding interpretation which the Court has given to the language of that Clause, the general public has now acquired the habit of assuming that practically every new State statute is to be submitted to final test before that Court.
