Over the past decade, a number of political scientists have employed presidential papers and other archival materials in order to test various hypotheses regarding American politics. This has been particularly true concerning the Vietnam War and the American presidency (Kahin 1986; Burke and Greenstein 1989; Berman 1982, 1989; Kolko 1985; Hatcher 1990), as scholars have explored the interconnections between ideology, political style, presidential character, and other variables which may explain America's participation in that war. Thus, while some in the profession may have disdained the use of traditional historical research and methodology, there clearly has been a modest resurgence of archival research for the purposes of theory building.

While I am among those who see real possibilities for illuminating political processes by drawing on archival sources, their usefulness should not be overstated: even rich archival collections-may not “solve” debates over causation of political phenomena.

Judicial review has run the gauntlet of criticism ever since John Marshall declared in Marbury v. Madison that “It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is….”

The critics have emphasized the incompatibility of judicial review with democratic values. In doing this, they have sometimes drawn, for effect, on the contrasting evolution of England and the U.S. on the issue. It is noted that the doctrine and practice of judicial review as they obtain in the contemporary U.S. were known “only in very attenuated form” in late sixteenth century and early seventeenth century England (Huntington 1968, 112), and were based on the need to guarantee that the King would no longer influence English judges “to support royal claims to the detriment of the liberties of the people” (Melone and Mace 1988, 207–08). Furthermore, by the eighteenth century the doctrine and the practice were extinct to the point where Blackstone

could flatly state that no court could declare invalid an act of Parliament however unreasonable it might be. To admit such a power, he said, “were to set the judicial power above that of the legislature, which would be subversive of all government.” (Huntington 1968, 112)

Since at the time of the Philadelphia Convention there was no hereditary monarch in America “with a vested interest in maintaining power at the expense of liberty,” and since government officials were elected by the people and were “consequently controlled by them,” it was argued, to no avail, by the likes of Robert Yates, that there was no need to repose virtually uncontrolled power in the judiciary “unless the goal is autonomy, not from a despotic King, but from the democratic tendencies of a free people” (Melone and Mace 1988, 207–08).

In the first year of the 80th Congress, 1947, sundry pieces of legislation were introduced regarding the commemoration of a variety of cultural, social, and political events, groups, or individuals. The House of Representatives saw bills to recognize Grandmother's day (H.J. Res. 35) (Elliot and Ali 1984), Patriot's Day (H.J. Res. 46), Thomas Alva Edison Day (H.J. Res. 64), National Loyalty Day (H.J. Res. 174), National Purple Heart Day (H.J. Res. 189), American Heroes' Day (H.J. Res. 212), Nation-Wide Bible Reading Month (H.J. Res. 20, 169), General Pulaski Memorial Day (H.J. Res. 204), and National Freedom Day (S.J. Res. 37). The bills for National Freedom Day sought to establish a national public holiday to commemorate the moment that African-Americans received their freedom in America. Unlike most of these other bills, S.J. Res. 37 would become law (Public Law 842), and the first National African-American public holiday was established—predating the King Holiday by more than three decades. The passage of this early African-American public holiday bill would in many ways parallel its better-known successor, the King Holiday bill.