JUDICIARY: Supreme Matters

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He was born 57 years ago in Chesterfield, N. H. At Amherst College he studied science, was called "Doc" and chosen class president. Sabrina, Amherst's famed 350-lb. "goddess" statue, was stolen from the class of '93 for the '94 class dinner. Afterwards, "Doc" Stone helped sneak Sabrina to the barn of Herman C. Harvey, back in Chesterfield, there to hide her away under the floor from Calvin Coolidge's class. Agnes Harvey, Mr. Harvey's daughter, was a discreet girl. She could keep the secret of Sabrina. "Doc" Stone married her.

Graduated from the Columbia Law School in 1898, Mr. Stone first became a professor there, then went into the law firm of Satterlee, Canfield & Stone, returning to Columbia in 1910 to serve as the Law School's dean. In 1924 President Coolidge, who never forgot a good man, called him to Washington, made him Attorney-General, asked him to ventilate thoroughly the Department of Justice after Harry Micajah Daugherty. Within a year President Coolidge advanced him to the Supreme Court to succeed Justice Joseph McKenna, resigned.

Justice Stone has just finished building a red brick house a block away from Chief Justice Taft's on Wyoming Avenue. To insure getting everything he wanted within it, he drew the contract for its construction himself.

Many an observer has commented on the likelihood of Junior Justice Stone's making, sooner or later, the one judicial step higher that remains for him. It is well within probability that President Hoover, especially if he is an eight-year President, will have the appointing of the next Chief Justice. There have been ten Chief Justices. Everyone since 1800 has died in office. Eight of them (Jay, Ellsworth, Marshall, Taney, Chase, Waite, Fuller. Taft) were called from outside the Supreme Court.

Only two Chief Justices were promoted from the bench. To one of these, John Rutledge of South Carolina, chosen by President Washington to succeed John Jay, the Senate refused confirmation and he had to resign. Jefferson observed sarcastically to Monroe that Washington's purpose had apparently been "to keep five mouths always gaping for one sugar plum."* But in 1910, when President Taft successfully elevated Edward Douglass White, the precedent was broken.

In his five years on the Supreme bench, Justice Stone has displayed a breadth of character and humanity to confound the six Senate critics who voted against his confirmation. They still wonder whether he is a liberal conservative or a conservative liberal. More and more has he joined intellectual forces with those two celebrated dissenters of the bench, Justices Holmes and Brandeis. With them he lined up, for example, against the Court's approval of wiretapping as a means of obtaining Prohibition evidence. Every legal controversy is of deep interest to him. He avoids the specialization of some of his associates on the bench. In his first four years he wrote 108 opinions. Tackle or guard, he is a comfort to the Chief Justice at centre. Perhaps he will be shifted to centre.