The Leon reporter. (Leon, Iowa) 1887-1930, 1911-06-08
JOHN MARSHALL HARLAN-E
JUST JUDGE.

JUDI OODUHs
The Philadelphia North American,
q republican newspaper. prints the
following remarkable and timely
editorial:
Half a century ago, Gin the wild
young mans soul was tested by ire
year of the change of things
The man of less than thirty had no
such easy problem as confronted
Americans of his age in the northern
states. John Marshall Harlan was
Kentuckian-a SCION of pioneer
family in the border state that IN
politics as in war always had been
'the dark and bloody ground that
the Indians christened long before
Boone blazed the wilderness trail
A hundred influences coaXed Har-
Ian toward espousal of the cause OF
secession, the very motives that APP
peal most strongly to young man.
Union sentiment was confined al
most exclusively 20 the poor
Whites" the illiterate mOuntaineers.
With rare exceptions men OF the
Harlan caste were ardent advocates
of the southern cause.
To 20 with the north meant more
than money loss and the probable
remuneration of all hope for a pro-
fessional career. 1t meant social
ostracism, forfeiture of close friend
ships and the bearing of the stigma
-'renegade.'
But John Marshall Harlan never
hesitated. One influence dominated
his action then as it has ruled every
later thought and deed in his long
life. He had no hatred for the slave
holders. Love for his natal state
was deep-rooted in his nature. But
he was a union man. And his love
for his country, for the past and
future of the nation of the great
experiment of freedom and human
rights, was deeper and stronger than
any personal or political tie.
AS the years passed and this
scholar and jurist ripened in broad
knowledge of history and all world
movements, that early devotion to
the principle of individual liberty
and rights of equal opportunity upon
which this republic was founded, and
only by perpetuation of which it can
survive, became more and more the
intellectual passion of Harlan-jus-
tice and patriot.
This was the man who would have
been Judas to his sacred civic creed
and inconsistent coward for the first
time in his life had he not last Mon
day afternoon become the chief ac-
tor in the most dramatic and unpre-
cedented scene ever staged in the
supreme court of the United States.
@ Fon nearly a quarter of century
Justice Harlan has been the chief
9stalwart opponent in the nations
tribunal of last resort of monopolis-
tic wealth which unremittingly has
fought for governmental recognition
<of what forces of special privilege
term euphemistically reasonable"
monopoly.
81. Steadfastly he has stood for the
truth that the fundamental function
of his government has ever been and
must be the safeguarding of the
citizens industrial and political
liberty and all human rights endan-
gered by any form of privilege or
tyranny.
In the fullness of wisdom he
knows that any government which
permits any individual or group to
monopolize in any degree, the neces-
stiles of all the people establishes a
principle and practice that, if un-
checked, inevitably must lead that
nation into beggary and bondage and
later into bloody revolution.
Yet it was the fate of this great
lover of the republic to sit on Mon
day and hear the court, whose honor
and dignity he references, deliver a
decision that, behind the mask of
declaration of the criminality of a
American peoples only statutory de-
Tense against monopolies; usurped
the functions of congress and the
executives; read arbitrarily into the
plain, clear language of a law sus-
tanned repeatedly and explicitly by
this very court darken;ng, cheating,
elusive words foreign to the intent OF
the trainers of the law and through
out twenty years rejected as amend
ments by the only constitutional law
making body of the nation.
Small wonder that when the voice
of judicial legislation and "the light
VI I0dSOu --Lu0 UOullIo VI tu0 ou0I-
man law around which every crimi-
nal of cunning in the land dances in
jubilation-every muscle in Harlan''s
massive frame grew tense, his kindly
face hardened into sterness and his
voice trembled with the depth of
just mans righteous wrath as, with
out written preparation or single
note in hand, he uttered the most
singing, irrefutable censure of an
action by the supreme court ever
heard in that chamber:
IF the act ought to read as con-
tended for by defendants, congress is
the body to amend it, and not this
court, by a process of judicial legis-
lation wholly unjustif1able.
"The public policy of the govern
ment is to be found in it's statutes,
and when they have not directly
spoken, then in the decisions of the
courts and the constant practice of
the government officials; but when
the lawmaking power speaks upon
a particular subject over which it
has constitutional power to legislate,
-,