Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit THURSDAY, JANUARY 9, 1936. AMERICAN RECOVERY PLANS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 56, Issue 74, 9 January 1936, Page 4

Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit THURSDAY, JANUARY 9, 1936. AMERICAN RECOVERY PLANS.

v The decision of the United States Supreme Court that the entire Agricultural Adjustment Administration programme is unconstitutional is rightly described as one of the most momentous decisions ever to affect American economic and political affairs. By a majority of six to three the Court declared the legislation invalid as being an “invasion of State rights” and beyond Federal control even under the “general welfare clause of the Constitution.” This decision in one stroke completes the destruction of the New Deal begun with the declaration that the National Recovery Act was unconstitutional. At almost every turn Mr Roosevelt has stumbled over the law courts. Rarely have they been of any assistance to him. One of the latest legal blows was dealt him in decisions of the United States Supreme Court that the powers he exercised in the codification of industries, which was of the very essence of his scheme, exceeded his presidential rights, that his granting of a moratorium on farm mortgages was similarly unconstitutional and that his dismissal of a trade commissioner erroneously assumed his possession of “illimitable power of removal.”. These decisions were in line with the damaging one delivered by the Court last January, when it held, by a majority judgment of eight to one in opposition to strenuous appeals of the Attorney-General for judicial aid, that a complete delegation of legislative power from Congress to President involved “an infraction of the constitutional mandate of segregation of legislative and executive functions.” The position has arisen from the fact that the Constitution, framed in the late eighteenth century, created, for the supposedly good governance of the United States, a system of three parts, respectively legislative (Congress), ■ executive (the President and his personal Cabinet) and judicial (the Federal Supreme Court). Congress and President were to keep as far apart as was practicable —and the Supreme Court was to be unchallengable referee whenever the other two quarrelled on the difficult frontier of their spheres of action, and to be above all the guardian of the Constitution. Mr Roosevelt is now faced with the immediate problem of recasting his agricultural policy, but observers foresee other difficulties, as the Court is likely to reverse the whole series of New Deal legislative action now before it. The further action of the Court will be awaited with great interest, as it will undoubtedly invest the forthcoming presidential election campaign with an importance far above that associated with normal elections.