Report No. 95
3.2. Importance of constitutional adjudication.-
By way of a general observation, it should be emphasised that the adjudication of constitutional controversies by the highest court of the country occupies a place not enjoyed by the determination of other types of controversies. Woodrow Wilson's description of such a court as a "Constituent assembly continuously in session" deserves to be kept in mind, familiar as it is to students of constitutional law. Each generation, it has been said, writes its own constitutional principles (but far from always), through the decisions of the Supreme Court.1
Mr. Justice Frankfurter's appellation-"a very special kind of court"2- applies almost to every court entrusted with the function of deciding constitutional questions.
1. A.S. Miller Supreme Court: Myth and Reality, p. 6.
2. Frankfurter The Supreme Court in the Mirror of Justice, (1957) 105 Univ Pona Law Review 781, quoted by A.S. Millar Supreme Court: Myth and Reality, p. 24.
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