Evening star., 1946-06-16

~ SOSEp
The Jackson Black embodiment which
famed to climax this past week in
Justice Robert H. Jackson's harsh criti-
cism of the judicial behavior OF his COL
league, Justice Hugo L. Black, drags
into plain sight poorly concealed situ-
alton that for several years has been
recognized as existing in the Supreme
Court
Until now, the traditional shield OF
secrecy around the court has forced
discussion Of the animosities there to
feed principally on rumor, an occa-
sional indiscreet leak" and the caustic
exchanges from time-to-time splicing
opinions which steadily have disclosed
widening differences among the JUS
tices. At no time, however, has there
been more than suspicion of the intra-
court bitterness disclosed by the Jack
son blast. That exhibition of feeling
had no parallel even in the cleavage
OF a half-dozen years ago, when such
vigorous dissenters as Justices James
Clark McReynolds, now retired, and the
late Pierce Butler. last of the con-
servative" bloc, battled away with the
oncoming advocates of the New Deal.
Justice Black, who stands accused
before House and Senate Judiciary
Committees of bringing the court into
"disrepute" by sitting in litigation in
which his former law partner won vic
tories was the first of the Roosevelt
appointees when the late President
began to mold a court whose members
presumably would share his economic
views
Started in Cotton Fields.
An Alabaman who started life in the
cotton fields, Justice Black came to the
bench on October 4, 1887, after militant
Senate service, and tagged as one
time member of the klan.
-Four years later, as the 1912 term
got under way, Justice Jackson, an
upstate New Yorker who had won his
way to the attorney generalship under
President Roosevelt took his place in
the court, along with James F. Byrnes,
another Senate graduate, following the
designations OF Justice McReynolds and
Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes.
Their appointments were viewed as
somewhat anticlimatic so far as affect
ing court trends was concerned. as the
New Deal already had a nominal five
member majority in the court Within
two and a half years after the Black
selection, death and designations had
enabled President Roosevelt to name
four more justices-Stanley F. Reed,
Felix Frankfurter, william O. Douglas
and Frank Murphy.
True, there had been some rumblings
Of discomfort in this brief "reconstruc-
tion area" but they did not attract
much notice then. In some quarters,
however. there has been a disposition to
trace the courts later troubles to an
incident in the 1940-41 term, when the
happy family" had falling out. Late
in the year, the court, which had earlier
given the green light to picketing in the
Carlson and Thornhill cases, was con-
fronted with Chicago case involving
American Federation of Labor teamsters
and the Meadowmoor Dairy Co., whose
nonunion distribution system had pro-
voked violence by the union. The fight
had been conducted with all the refine
ments of gang warfare-window smash
ing, bombing. fires, truck wrecking,
shooting and beating, and the company
sought relief by going into State court
in Illinois and obtaining a restraining
order against union pickets.
Injunction Validity Upheld.
The validity OF the injunction was
challenged in the Supreme Court and,
in So decision, Justice Frankfurter,
the former Harvard law professor with
liberal background, said that picketing,
even though peaceful in itself, could be
prohibited when set lin a context of
violence"
Joined by Justice Murphy alone of
the newcomers, and Chief Justice
Hughes, and Justices Stone and Roberts
of the "old" court, Justice Frankfurter
declared that the constitutional guar
antees of freedom of speech and press
on which the union relied, cannot be
too often invoked as basic to our
scheme of liberty. But these liberties
will not be advanced, or even main
tained, by denying to the States with
all their resources, including the instru-
mentality of their courts, the power to
deal with coercion due to extensive
violence
Justice Black, in a warm dissent in
which Justice Douglas joined, hit back
with the assertion that lin my belief,
the opinion just announced. gives ap-
proval to an injunction which seriously
infringes on the constitutional rights of
freedom of speech and the press. To
such result can not agree
Justice Reed wrote dissent in similar
vein.
Whether the break in the ranks
originated then is matter of opinion.
At any rate, that was the term when
dissents started to mushroom, and the
court finished out the year with 110.
Justice Murphy swung back to the
Douglas -Black-Reed liberal grouping,
which was assuming recognizable shape.
Justice Frankfurter was heading in the
opposite direction.
The Jackson and Brynes appoint
ment corporation would provide fl550O,-