"No matter whether the Constitution follows the flag or not, the Supreme Court follows the election returns." So concluded the immortal Dooley after some observations about the Insular Cases in the course of which he also said of the Constitution that it wasn't likely to chase the flag anywhere, being more in the nature of a home-staying Constitution with a blue coat, with brass buttons on it, carrying a gold-headed cane, and not given to compulsive dromomania. The American Political Science Association at its 1953 meeting in Washington posed Dooley's dictum to some who still concern themselves with the Supreme Court and its works; at the meeting, as is the fashion among panelists, some said "yes" and some said "no" to Dooley's proposition. This paper grew out of that panel discussion and is an effort to sketch an interpretation of the Court in its past prime and present predicament. It is addressed not to the validity of the dictum Dooley stated but to the question Dooley really raised. The question Mr. Dooley really raised is whether there are any observations that can be documented as to the behavior of the Supreme Court a non-democratic institution towards the popular institutions whose actions it reviews and judges, with special reference to the occasions when important new doctrine appears. The period within which this problem will be considered will be the last century or so, that is, the period from the 1840's to the present day. This comprises roughly two-thirds of the Court's history; the first third is omitted for reasons of space. Necessarily, the treatment is broad and not circumstantial, and is concerned more with contour than with detail. It bears repeating that these pages trace a pattern only and that a pattern necessarily leaves out more than it includes. The conclusion that seems best to fit the writer's understanding of the Court and its works is twofold. First, the Court has responded more certainly to the needs of the propertied for protection than to the needs of the propertyless for relief, and has readily made new doctrine to fulfill this end. Its chief problem in the period just before the Civil War, for example, was the succor of the slave-holding community, and after that war, the guarantee of the security of busi[207]