SUPREME COURT: A Fresh Start

Last week, much freshened by a summer of comparative rest, nine men assembled quietly in the old Senate Chamber of the Capitol. They had donned their long black vestments in their robing room and now quietly sat down behind a long counter and resumed their work. Frequently they do not leave their little room in June until after Congress has gone vacationing, and usually they return to it in the fall long before Congress takes up its more ostentatious labors. In this season of the year they usually have the great Capitol to themselves, except for a few attendants and the ubiquitous sightseer; but last week there were nearly 400 bustling foreigners mincing through the rotunda to the sessions of the Interparliamentary Union in the Chamber of the House.

Only a small group of visitors assembled to see the opening of the Supreme Court, although in several ways it was historic. The fact that none of the seats in the court room are reserved for privileged persons, such as diplomats and friends of the members, helps to quell the itch to get in. And then the members live such quiet lives.

A onetime President leads there a dignified but almost forgotten existence. There sits the aged Justice Holmes in his 85th year.* There sit the neat Mr. Sanford, the rangy Mr. McReynolds, the substantial Mr. Stone, Mr. Brandeis of the rumpled hair, and three other quiet gentlemen, Mr. Sutherland, Mr. Van Devanter, Mr. Butler. They seem like an institution of the ages, and in a way they are. They are appointed for life to a court as old as the Government. Yet more than half of them are newcomers, comparatively speaking, Taft, Sutherland, Butler, Sanford and Stone having been appointed since President Harding took office four and a half years ago.

Innovations. At the opening session of the Court, Chief Justice Taft read the original docket, some of the cases on which are 20 years old—the first occasion on which it has been done in years. As usual the docket had grown by some 100 cases. The Court is more than two years behind in its business. The object of reading the docket was to put in force new regulations given to the Court by act of the last Congress, empowering it to decline to hear many cases and thus abbreviate its docket. Among the cases thrown out under this ruling was a whole series of cases by the State of New York against manufacturers in New Jersey for making objectionable smoke and smells.