JUDICIARY: Visibility Poor

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The three subordinates on whom President Roosevelt depends to win his Senate victories are Majority Leader Joseph T. Robinson of Arkansas, the bull-voiced, heavy-fisted field commander; Pat Harrison of Mississippi, the shrewd committee and cloakroom horsetrader; and James F. Byrnes of South Carolina, the suave personal envoy. All three were present one noon last week when Senator Robinson summoned newsmen to his office to discuss the President's breathtaking proposal for rejuvenating the Judiciary (TIME, Feb. 15). Talk skimmed over various features of the plan. "Speaking solely for Joe Robinson." the 64-year-old Majority Leader, who hopes his next step up will be to the Supreme Court bench, observed that justices might well be superannuated at 75 instead of the President's 70.

As the interview ended, one reporter lingered to suggest that the public would view the plan more favorably if it were assured that the Supreme Court might be increased to 15 only temporarily. That, declared Senator Robinson, was exactly what the President contemplated. With interpolations by Senator Byrnes, he proceeded to dictate a statement making the point entirely clear: "Any increase above nine in the membership of the Court can exist only so long as there are judges eligible for retirement. When judges retire the number is reduced by the number retiring. The purpose is always to keep nine members of the Court who are under the retirement age."

All the President would say in regard to the Majority Leader's statement was:

Look at the bill. Correspondents looked, found in Subsection A the proposal to add a new judge for each one past 70. In Subsection B: "the number of judges of any court shall be permanently increased by the number appointed thereto under the provisions of Subsection A."

The astonishing misapprehension of Senators Robinson, Byrnes & Harrison was typical of the confusion which prevailed in Washington last week after the first shock of the President's proposal had passed. California's Hiram Johnson, Missouri's Bennett Champ Clark and Montana's Burton K. Wheeler made up their minds against the plan. But after the first quick division for & against, the 30-odd remaining Senators who held the balance of power were lying low, waiting to see how the wind blew. Letters from constituents and memorials from State Legislatures were mostly pro-Court, but there were enough pro-President to give Congressmen pause. Asked why he had suddenly canceled plans to introduce two non-controversial items of the President's program in a separate bill, Chairman Hatton W. Sumners of the House Judiciary Committee spoke the troubled mind of many another Congressman: "The visibility is poor, it's foggy, the barometer is too low and the wind is not in the right direction. So I decided not to take off."