The Daily Alaska empire., 1937-03-23
MORE DELAY BY AMENDMENT

Defenders of the conservative faith appear to be leaning at least some of them toward amend ment to the Constitution as sort of compromise in the present Supreme Court controversy They see danger in Congress placing too much power in the hands of the President without due sanction of the people One of those to forward with concrete proposal which on its face to be fairly sound is David Lawrence the veteran political writer and head of the United States News. Mir. Lawrence sug- gests the following amendment:
 Section |: The Supreme Court of the
 United States shall consist of a Chief Justice
 and eight associate justices who shall be eli-
 gibe for retirement at 65 but who shall be
 retired automatically at the ending of the term
 of Court following their seventy fifth birthday
 Sections ?: Congress shall appropriate
 pension at full pay for retiring justices of the
 Supreme Court which shall not be diminished
 during their lifetime.
 Section 3: The President shall nominate
 successors to justices who resign or retire and
 such nominations shall be transmitted to the
 Senate Tn the session of Congress immediately
 preceding the known expiration of the term of
 any justice. A two-thrds vote of the Senate
 shall be required for confirmation by the
 Senate.
 Section 4: No recess appointments of jus
 tices of the Supreme Court shall be made. A
 quorum of the Court shall always consist of
 two-t thirds of the sitting justices.
 Section g. No act of Congress and no act
 of a State legislature shall be declared invalid
 by the Supreme Court of the United States
 except by the affirmative vote of two-thirds of
 sitting justices
 If to have amendment MT. Lawrences suggestion appears worthy consideration But the fact remains all the judges the Supreme bench and lot of the rest of will be dead and buried before amendment to the Constitution would be ratified by the several States An excellent example of how long it takes is the Child Labor amendment which has been kicked around for many that many of us could not say right now what it contains In other words, amendment the court would defeat the very thing that the President proposes to do-speed up judiciary system And every per who has been litigant realizes that little speed highly desirable If the nations general busi- ness was conducted at the same tempo Of there probably would not be any business
 Chief Justice Hughes in letter to the Senate Judiciary committee yesterday said the present num- Der Of Justices is thought be large enough so far as prompt adequate and efficient conduct of the work of the Court is concerned" He went on to say that an increase the number of Judges would mean more Judges to confer more Judges to discuss and more Judges to be convinced.
 It is doubtless true more difficult task to con- vince fifteen than nine. but the Chief Justice talks of prompt and adequate" service by the Court. Most of us who have been waiting weeks months and even years decisions naturally ask how long has this been going on?" If there is anything prompt about reaching a court verdict aside perhaps from some police judge sentencing drunk on Monday