Anti-National Phases of the State Government [pp. 85-102]

ANTI-NATIONAL PHASES OF STATE GOVERNMENT. 99
their special adaptation to the task; they must be men of large
juridical experience and of liberal spirit, competent to appre.
hend the precise points of conflict, and to act with a broad com prehension of national conditions and national wants.
The work of such a convention should extend over a far
wider field than the single subject of marriage and divorce; that
is one only of the multiform instances of the conflict of laws.
The whole body of the statute law of the States needs to be
fused and moulded into a harmonious system. A really small
part of the legislation of a State is purely local and special in
its nature, and with that a national convention has of course no
concern; but those general laws that affect the business and the
industry, the material and the moral interests of the people as a
nation, in regard to which the circumstances of no State require
a distinctive or isolated policy, should be framed by the united
wisdom of the nation, and should be, as nearly as possible, identical throughout all the States. Such a nationalcode of laws,
digested by a joint convention, and then adopted and enacted
by each State, is the only effective substitute for federal centralization, and the only available solution of the present conflict of States.
In the judicial enforcement of a national code, differences
of interpretation would unavoidably be developed in the independent courts of the separate States. To harmonize and authoritatively settle these differences, power must be vested in
the Supreme Court of the United States to exercise an appellate
jurisdiction; such power, if not already involved in the constitutional right to decide "controversies between the States," is
not inconsistent with the spirit of those provisions of the Constitution that define the functions of the federal judiciary, and
a constitutional amendment expressly conferring the required
jurisdiction would be wholly germane to the present system.
The enactment of a uniform system of State law, however,
while yielding temporary relief, would fail to establish any sufficient guaranty for the future. No code can be made perfect
or remain stationary. Experience and the changed conditions
of progress would develop the constant need of amendment and
of extension; and the States, being supreme and acting separately, would inevitably diverge as they have done in the past,
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