“It is striking how narrow and in a sense artificial is the distinction … between … trust powers and powers.” That distinction (whatever it may have been) and its consequences have, in recent years, led to a good deal of judicial bewilderment; the distinction still exists but, after Re Baden, certain of its principal consequences have disappeared.

In Pakistan, Uganda and Southern Rhodesia, courts have held themselves entitled to declare that the effect of a successful revolution has been to change the law in their respective jurisdictions. Judges appointed under one constitution have held themselves to be bound to recognise the validity of laws promulgated under a different constitution; the judge's own political opinions have been said to be irrelevant.

Immediately after the 1970 Congressional elections in America, The Times noted that proposals to lower the voting age were rejected by the voters in ten of the fifteen states where these proposals had been put to a referendum. It was then observed: “The issue will be decided this term by the Supreme Court, which will almost certainly take the result of the state elections into account.” To the English reader this may seem to be sociological jurisprudence carried to a ludicrous extreme or some primitive system of adjudication by popular acclamation. Of course, when the constitutionality of the federal statute fixing the voting age at 18 was challenged in the Court, the petitioners were not obliged to cite the election statistics in their brief, but the saying that the justices “follow the election returns” is a maxim of American politics on which constitutional lawyers rely. What that maxim implies—Something that foreign observers may misunderstand—is that the United States Supreme Court is not just a court, at least not in the usual sense of the word. To describe it merely as a court is to ignore the most important implications of its work, for it is very much a part of the political process.