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About Roseburg news-review. (Roseburg, Or.) 1920-1948 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 22, 1946)
ROSEBURS NEWS-REVIEW, ROSEBURS, "OREGON, THURSDAY, AUGUST 22, 'I945. NINE Experience in Lower Court Procedure Lacking In U. S. Supreme Court's Personnel By PETER EDSON NEA Washington Correspondent WASHINGTON. Records of present Supreme Court Justices reveal a surprising lack of judicial experience before appointment to the highest tribunal. Confirmation of Fred M. Vinson as Chief Jus tice will make him the man with most lower court background. It's a mere five years. Four of them were spent as Associate Justice of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. The fifth year was spent as Chief Judge of the Emergency Court of Appeals for Price Control. Vinson apparently did all right. There were no complaints. But there was nothing about his record that was in any way distinguished. The only other justice with any experience on the bench prior to his Supreme Court appoint ment is Wiley Rutledge. He also served four years on the D. C. Court of Appeals. But that's the sum total nine years of judicial experience an average of one year per member. Maybe that isn't quite accurate either. Justice Hugo LaFayette Black served 18 months as a po lice court judge in Birmingham back around 1910. It would make even a Philadelphia lawyer sweat, however, to prove that saying "Thirty days'f and "S10 and costs" to a bunch of drunks and bums qualified a man to be come senior justice on the Su preme Court of the United States. Black's other legal expe-r'-nce was a county prosecutor it . two years,-a general practice la -yer for six and a U. S. sena tor for 12. A distinguished career, no doubt, but not what it should take to make a top judge. Other Also Lacking The same is true of all the others. Justice Stanley Reed, before appointment , to the Supreme Court in 1938, served as counsel for a couple of alphabet agencies and as U. S. Solictor General for three years. Justice William O. Douglas served three years on the Securities and Exchange Commission. Felix Frankfurter and Wiley Rutledge were both professors of law, the former at Harvard, the latter at Colorado, Iowa and Washington University in St. Louis. Frankfurther even de clined Gov. Ely's appointment to the Massachusetts Supreme Court in 1932. Frank Murphy and Robert H. Jackson were former attorneys general. Murphy was in politics as governor of Michigan and the Philippines. Jackson, like Reed, had also been U. S. Solicitor Gen eral. Harold H. Burton was a lawyer ad mayor of Cleveland, then U. S. senator from Ohio for only four years when President Tru man named him to the Supreme Court last September. Causes 5-4 Decisions This sad lack of previous ex perience on the bench presents a serious criticism of the American judicial system. It also offers a plausible explanation for the squabbles and dissentions, the five-to-four decisions, the philo sophical arguments between con servative and liberal factions which have characterized the Su preme Court's performance in re cent years. As the late Chief Justice Har lan F. Stone is reported to have said, his principal trouble with the court was that the president never sent up enough real judges to get out the work. The present court may be made up of entirely capable and even brilliant lawyers. But lawyers. Not trained Judges. The best lawyer in the country would prob ably moke the worst judge. All right then, what's the mat ter with the lower federal courts and the state courts that they aren't producing more rookie judges that can be drafted iiffo the big league Supreme Court? The frantic six weeks' search by President Truman to find a suc cessor to Chief Justice Stone is an admission that the judicial talent in the United States and on the Supreme Court itself is at an extremely low ebb. Scanning these state and fed eral courts, the president's scouts could find no one big enough for the Supreme Court job. Why not? Loyal Hacks Preferred There's nothing the matter with the pay these ludges get. Their salaries have been raised over the years to put them be yond political pressure, to give them security and freedom from bias. Maybe that's the trouble. In their smug aloofness, maybe the judges have become intellectually lazy, fat and fat-headed. Ouster of Senator Bilbo Demanded by Negroes LOUISVILLE, Ky Aug. 21. F Petitions to unseat Senator Bilbo (D.-Miss.), to "outlaw the KiJr'vSux Klan in the United States" and to pass a federal anti-lynching law have been signed bv several hundred physi cians attending the convention of the National Negro Medical As sociation here. The petitions already have been sicned By 4HO,lHH all over the country, it was -announced. One of the petitions, criticizing Bilbo's recent radio broadcast in which he uroed "red-blooded Anglo-Saxons in Mississippi to resort to any means to keep all Negroes from voting in the pri mary election," asks that the U. S. senate deny a seat to Bilbo for 'disorderly behavior." New Miracle Drug Aids Boys in Typhoid Battle MEDFORD, Aug. 21.-m The two sons of Mr. and Mrs. M. W. Cranston, Donny, 5, and Larry, 8, ill with typhoid fever, are much improved, their mother reported toda". - ' The boys were treated with the new miracle druc streptomycin when they were running temp eratures of 104 degrees. Mrs. Cranston said the drug was pro vided without cost by manufac turers to obtain data for their records. Stetson Strike. Ended PHILADELHJA, Aug. 21. UP) A nine-day strike of 2,000 Stet son Hat Company workers was over today after a labor-management agreement was reached to send the dispute to arbitration. Mokelumne Hill Fire Destroys Four Buildings MOKELUMNE HILL, Calif., Aug. 21. f Five wiped out nearly a fourth of the business section of this old mining town, which last month was rocked by a bomb explosion. . No one was injured in the blaze which swept the main block in the center of town and destroyed four buildings a two-story building which housed the post office and a library; a two-story stone structure of the Calaveras Electric Company, the John A. Rollins Refrigeration Company and a building used by the assay office and the printing plant of the Calaveras weekly. Jiffewcty Lunch WHS Be Closed All Day Wednesday Open Sunday7 a. m.-l 1 p. m. 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