Evening star., 1948-01-14
AMotter of Simple Justice

! Because it affects the civil rlgnCS OF cltl-
zens the Attorney General should inter-
yene, as friend of the court, in the antici-
pated Supreme Court review OF the
Gwynne Act.
This is the 1910 law by which Congress
sought to extend to citizens of the Capital
and the Territories the rights possessed by
citizens of the States, in controversies in
volving diversity of citizenship, to sue and
be sued in the Federal courts.
The law has been invalidated in the
lower courts. The losing plaintiff, the Ma
tional Mutual Insurance Company of this
city, will appeal. If the review is granted,
the Supreme Court will be passing anew on
the question for the first time since the
days of Chief Justice Marshall.
Representative Gwynne Of Iowa, who
sponsored the bill in the House, has an
nounced that he will ask the Attorney
General to intervene. Such intervention
would be altogether appropriate. In re-
porting the bill to the House in March OF
1910, the House Judiciary Committee said:
"It should be borne in mind that the citi-
zens of the District of Columbia and of
the Territories are citizens of the United
States. They are subject to the burdens
and obligations of such citizenship just as
are the citizens of the forty EIGHT States.
Simple justice requires that they should
share the rights and privileges of such
citizenship insofar as Congress has au-
thority to confer it upon them. This is the
real intent of the Constitution"
The question is whether Congress has
that authority. Members of Congress
thought it had. Chief Justice Marshall,
whose original opinion stripped Washing
tonians of their right of access to the Fed
eral courts outside the District, remarked
that q. it is extraordinary that the
courts of the United States which are open
to aliens, and to the citizens of every State
of the Union, should be closed upon them
(the citizens of the District. But this is
a subject for legislative, not for judicial
consideration"
Remedy through legislation has been
tried So far, in the light of controlling
decisions it is futile remedy. But that
should be finally determined, for if legis-
lative remedy is unavailable the Constitu-
ton should be amended to remove an
anomaly unsupported by logic or justice.
The denial to citizens of the District of
the right to sue and be sued in the Fed
eral courts and the denial to them of the
right of suffrage in national elections and
representation in their Government spring
from the same source-an omission on the
part of the authors of the original Consti-
tuition.
In protecting the rights reserved to citi-
zens of the States, they were clearly not
thinking of the future citizens of future
American Capital. Or, if thinking of them
at ALL they were thinking in terms ex-
pressed by Madison, who assumed that
the States which were to cede territory
to the Federal Government for Capital
would, by terms of the cession, protect the
rights of these citizens.
They were not protected. And if they
cannot be restored in whole or in part by
legislation, appropriate amendment of the
Constitution is the alternative. One de-
sirable implication of the Supreme Court
review would be claridcation, in the light
OF facts as they are today, of that point
And no question now pending in the courts
so directly affects the bona f1de civil rights
of citizenS as does this one