THE JUDICIARY: How Long the War?

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While Congress was sweating this week over extension of rent controls,* the U.S. Supreme Court took a look at the rent-control law of 1947. As it has in other cases involving congressional war powers, the Court upheld the law's constitutionality. There was no dissent, but Justice Robert Jackson made a significant point about the "vague and undefinable" war powers under which it had become a law.

Said Justice Jackson: "No one will question that this power is the most dangerous one to free government in the whole catalogue of powers. . . . In this case, the Government urged hasty decisions to forestall some emergency . . . and pleads that paralysis will result if its claims to power are denied. . . . I cannot accept the argument that war powers last as long as the effect and consequences of war, for if so they are permanent—as permanent as the war debts."

In another decision, the Supreme Court upheld, in effect, the investigating powers of the House Un-American Activities Committee. It refused to review an appeal by Communist Leon Josephson, convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to testify before the committee last March.