Evening star., 1948-06-27

summer. The Justices will put In
plenty OF far-from-light summer
reading to start wrestling in the
fall with such top-weight posers as
Is the closed shop constitutional
May an employer legally give 9
merit raise" to worker without
bargaining with a union?
Is the House Committee on Un.
American Activities in tune with the
Constitution? Were witnesses such as
Hollywood personages legally brought
to trial for contempt of Congress In
not answering queries about Com
munist tieups?
Was Carl A. Marzani, former State
Department .employe, properly in
dicted and fairly found guilty In
District Court here on charges OF
falsely telling his employers in a
loyalty probe that he never belonged
to the Communist Party?
Should Federal employees serve on
District Court juries? Should Dis
trict citizens and corporations be
permitted to sue and be sued in
Federal courts outside of Washing
ton?
Did Washington policemen break
search-and- seizure bounds when,
without warrant, they resorted to
"transom peeping" to get evidence?
Is the New York State censorship
statute invalid and should Edmund
Wilson's book, Memoirs of Hecate
County," have been banned under
that law? Do cities prevent free
speech when they prohibit sound
trucks?
1900 Cases in Process
That would be only the vanguard
OF some 1900 litigation units likely
to find assignment and disposal
during the coming term.
Decisions will not necessarily be
on rock-bottom constitutional is
sues, actual or claimed The court
often passes only on particular
points, technicalities or jurisdiction
al considerations. But the advance
lineup indicates the term will be no
less exciting, even to the layman,
than the recent session.
AS for the justices themselves.
some of the complicated legal chal-
lenges are certain to test their fire.
quently diverse attitudes and ap-
proaches in social and constitutional
patterns.
The 1947 term closed last Monday
with q typical barrage of varied
opinions, concurrences, dissents,
"yes-but" concurrences, and disz
sents- within -dissents. 1t Jagged be-
hind the previous year in bulk OF
business and output, but in general
it contained bigger and farther
reaching cases.
The record lists l08 written ma
jority opinions, with 33 concurring
and 81 dissenting opinions. Totals
a year ago were 142 opinions, with
20 concurring and >78 dissenting.
Comparative figures do not include
unwritten concurrences and dis
sents or host of other orders which
sometimes carried dissents.
Justices Black, Douglas, Murphy
and Rutledge continued to be most
often in general agreement, usually
in dissenting.
Justices Reed, Frankfurter, Jack
son and Burton and Chief Justice
Vinson made up the majority in
many of the 5-to-4 decisions
Yet, Justices Frankfurter and Jack
son outnumbered the others in writ
ten dissents and Justice Douglas
wrote % OF the majority opinions.
Often bewildering to the layman
and perhaps to some lawyers, the
opinions varied greatly in length
content, style and outlook.
One Unanimous Opinion
OF eight majority written opin-
ions last Monday, only one was
unanimous. Four were S to 4, two
6 to and the other 8 to l. They
had a total of 10000 words. Sew
eral unwritten concurrences and
dissents were noted.
In the unanimous decision ap-
proving expenditures for labor union
publications in political campaigns,
four justices thought it should have
gone further, and a fifth justice
wrote concurring opinion from
still another angle.
Two sets of dissents appeared
with the 5-to-4 ruling against a
former Nazi who tried to avoid
deportation. Justice Black wrote
one in. which Justices Douglas,
Murphy and Rutledge joined. JUS
tice Douglas wrote the other, in
which Justices Murphy and Rut-
ledge joined. In one of the 6-to-3
decisions the three dissenters stated
their reasons in writings from two
to 35 pages.
NeverthelesS the four cases that
attracted prime public notice since
last october were decided either
unanimously or by substantial mar
gins. The rulings in at least three
of them created fresh public con-
troversy or left some questions still
unanswered.
Covenant Case Example
BY unanimous vote the court
ruled that Federal and State courts
cannot enforce agreements among
property owners to exclude persons
from residential areas because of
race or color. Restrictive covenants
in the District were directly at issue
in two of the four cases before the
court. Chief Justice Wilson's opin-
ion did not declare covenants un-
constitutional as private agreements,
but simply said they could not stand