7.  May people honestly and amicably differ about the interpretation of the constitution or of a law, in a particular case?  If important interests are dependent on the interpretation, how can the true one be found out?  Does a lawyer’s opinion settle the interpretation?  What value has such an opinion?  Where must people go for authoritative and final interpretations of the laws?  Can they get such interpretations by simply asking for them?

8.  The constitution of New Hampshire provides that when the governor cannot discharge the duties of his office, the president of the senate shall assume them.  During the severe sickness of a governor recently, the president of the senate hesitated to act in his stead; it was not clear that the situation was grave enough to warrant such a course.  Accordingly the attorney-general of the state brought an action against the president of the senate for not doing his duty; the court considered the situation, decided against the president of the senate, and ordered him to become acting governor.  Why was this suit necessary?  Was it conducted in a hostile spirit?  Wherein did the decision help the state?  Wherein did it help the defendant?  Wherein may it possibly prove helpful in the future history of the state?

9.  Mention particular things that the governor, the legislature, and the judiciary of your state have done or may do.  Then find the section or clause or wording in your state constitution that gives authority for each of these things.  For example, read the particular part that authorizes your legislature:—­

a.  To incorporate a city. b.  To compel children to attend school. c.  To buy uniforms for a regiment of soldiers. d.  To establish a death penalty. e.  To send a committee abroad to study a system of waterworks.

10.  Trace the authority of a school-teacher, a policeman, a selectman, a mayor, or of any public officer, back to some part of your constitution.

11.  Mention any parts of your constitution that seem general and somewhat indefinite, and that admit, therefore, of much freedom in interpretation.

12.  Show how the people are, in one aspect, subordinate to the constitution; in another, superior to it.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.

Written Constitutions.—­Very little has been written or published with reference to the history of the development of the idea of a written constitution.  The student will find some suggestive hints in Hannis Taylor’s Origin and Growth of the English Constitution, vol. i, Boston, 1889.  See Henry Hitchcock’s American State Constitutions; a Study of their Growth, N.Y., 1887, a learned and valuable essay.  See also J.H.U.  Studies, I., xi., Alexander Johnston, The Genesis of a New England State (Connecticut); III., ix.-x., Horace Davis, American Constitutions; also Preston’s Documents Illustrative of American History, 1606-1863, N.Y., 1886; Stubbs, Select Charters and other Illustrations of English Constitutional History, Oxford, 1870; Gardiner’s Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, Oxford, 1888.