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Justices in Collision
| Article
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16638 |
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Section : |
BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
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10 / 1989 |
2,809 Words |
| Author
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Larry D. Nachman
Larry D. Nachman is professor of political science at the
College of Staten Island, CUNY, and is a frequent contributor
to Commentary and Salmagundi. He is completing a book on
psychoanalysis and social theory. |
THE ANTAGONISTS
Hugo Black, Felix Frankfurter
and Civil Liberties in Modern America
James Simon
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989
320 pp., $19.95
Few things characterize the American political system more and few things are less well understood than the way in which conflict and tension are built into its inner workings. People, when speaking of government, once used the organic analogy: The state was like an organism; its parts and subdivisions all acted together for the good of the whole. Later, when people became more accustomed to thinking about machines rather than living bodies, a mechanical analogy replaced the organic: The state was like a machine; its various components worked together for a common purpose. In both cases, the ideal presented is a harmony of the parts. American journalists and politicians still evoke such an ideal notwithstanding the fact that it is of the essence of democracy to produce no such harmonies. It is a system that embraces dissonances rather than a harmony of parts.
The electoral struggles and political conflicts typical of democracy reflect its central ideas: that members of society do not and should not have but one common interest and that differences which will always be found within society should be resolved again and again solely by the play of fair and peaceful political competition. The theme of conflict appears at every turn in the American Constitution, as its authors seemed to take devilish delight in having governmental officials placed forever on a collision course with each other. The famous "checks and balances" refers to this pattern of breaching the principle of separation of powers by creating overlapping powers and responsibilities at critical points throughout the system.
At the very heart of the American political system lies a deep and deliberate contradiction. America is a constitutional democracy. Yet there is an inherent contradiction between these two terms. To put the matter in its simplest form, democracy involves rule by majorities. Mechanisms are brought into being to give a majority a means of registering its judgments on the policies pursued by government. A constitutional system is a system of limited government; certain things may not be done or they can only be done in a certain way, even if a clear and determined majority wishes to do them. By and large, a consensus has existed in America that the system remain a
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