The Petal paper. [volume] (Petal, Miss.) 1953-19??, 1957-07-25
Congressional
Sidelighis
THE SUPREME cOURT-u
BY
Congressman VIM. Colmer

ed briefly some of the major
decisions that have caused an
uproar over the Supreme Court
such as has not occurred since
the 1930'S when the Court was
under fire by the New Deal and
was accused of taking a stand at
the opposite extreme, that of
ultra conservatism, from its
present position. To the Courts
controversial decisions must now
be added the second Girard case,
that of Army Specialist SIC
William S. Girard, whom the
Supreme Court ruled can be tri-
ed by a japanese tribunal for
causing the target range death
of japanese woman.
One of the ironical features
Of the lineup in the Supreme
Court is that the appointees of
the conservative Eisenhower
Administration so far have a
tendency to be much more Ii
beral than the appointees of the
liberal Truman Administration.
Chief Justice Earl Warren, for
example, has been teaming up
very consistently with Associate
Justices Hugo l.. Black and
William o. Douglas, who were
the radicals" of the Court in
the New Deal days. Associate
Justice William J. Brennan, an
other Eisenhower appointee, has
tended to line up with this
group, forming a basic liberal
core of four of the nine Justices.
with only one out of the other
five Justices needed to assure a
majority. On the other hand,
Justice Tom Clark, who served
as Attorney General during the
Truman Administration, has dis
sented from several recent opin-
ions In fact, he stood alone !
in defense of the security of the
r. B. I. files. The most consis-
tent conservative through the |
years has been Associate Justice
Harlan, a former Senator, who
was also appointed by President |
Truman Even Justice Felix
Frankfurter, one of the New |
Deal appointees, has tended in
recent cases to be more con-
sentative than the Eisenhower
appointees. The third Eisen-
hover appointee, Justice Whit
aker, has been on the Supreme
Court such a short time that he
has not participated in any of
the recent cases except the sec
ond Girard case and his basic
philosophy is, as yet, unknown,
though statements he has made
tend to indicate that he is con-
cerned more with the legal pre-
cedents than other Members of
the Bench.
The trend of recent events
led the u. S. News and World
Report, a highly respected week
ly magazine published in Wash
ington, to headline one of its
recent articles Turmoil in
Washington" and to subtitle it
Supreme Court = Congress II
White House in the Struggle of
the Century. The magazine
correctly concluded, in our opin-
ion, that back of it all lies a
conflict that runs through Con-
gress, the Courts and the Exec
utive Branch of government.
This conflict is between those
who want to use the power of
government to undertake an
ever wider range of tasks, from
regulating race relations in COM
munities to regulating the de-
tails of private business, and
those who feel that government
power should be held in check
as much as possible. In other
words, we are seeing a continual
ton of the struggle between the
Hamiltonian and the Jeffersonian |
PHILOSOPHERS of government, the
philosophy of the Capitalization
of power in Washington as or