JUDICIARY: The New Constitution

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The Court session which ended this week was marked by several milestones: the opinions reached further than any session since the 1936-37 term, the year of the Court's Big Wind, when the Wagner Act and Social Security legislation were held Constitutional. This time the Federal Wages and Hours Act was upheld unanimously, even though "control of intrastate activities" was involved; the famed Hammer v. Degenhart decision of 1918, invalidating a child-labor law, was specifically overruled; the Government's power of regulation over navigable streams was held to be "as broad as the needs of commerce," the Government was authorized to regulate State primaries as well as general elections; the refusal of a company to hire employes because of union affiliations was held to be an unfair labor practice; officers of a labor union were held to be not subject to trial under the Sherman Antitrust Law; a labor union was held entitled peacefully to picket a business establishment even though no members of the union were employed there. Repeatedly the National Labor Relations Board and labor unions were adjudged right. The powers of corporations, of States (except in taxes) and of individuals were curtailed; the power of the Government extended to the point of exaggeration.

U.S. lawyers, liberal and Tory, had already been given one new guide to the law: no longer could any precedent established before March 1937 be relied on as a clue to the future. The U.S. Constitution was no longer written, and the law was what the Justices were making it.