Eveing Post.

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 108, 9 May 1930, Page 8

Eyeing Post.

FRIDAY, MAY 9, 1930.

MR. HOOVER'S "FIRST MAJOR

DEFEAT"

The rejection by the United States of President Hoover's nominee for the Supreme Court Bench which was reported yesterday raises a" number of questions of exceptional interest and importance. The fact that it was the President's "first major defeat in Congress" may be, for the moment at any rate, the most interesting aspect of the matter for his fellowcountrymen asit certainly is of the least interest for outsiders. Yet even outside the United States the defeat of President Hoover by a body which may be encouraged by this success to discredit him still more by rejecting his Naval Treaty is really a matter of very serious concern. Reviewing the first year of his administration, which closed at the beginning of March, a not unfriendly correspondent of the "Baltimore Sun" mentioned farm relief, the tariff, Prohibition, business stability, and naval disarmament as having been the chief objects of his attention, and commented as follows:—

Nothing has been settled with respect to, any of them, which means that none can be looked upon as an unqualified success. .. . Where this Administra-tion-has suffered most, all observers argue, is in its relation with Congress. No one argues any more that he has received any leadership which that body recognises ov follows.

About the same time another important authority, the "Springfield Republican" (20th February), sounded something very like a note of alarm in a leading article which opened as follows:—

Already staggering to bear,, the troubles of tho President may easily pile up to the point where the back of his Administration will be broken if Congress does not eqmo to his relief.

If Congress, which in both these matters means the Senate, gives the President the same kind of help with the Naval Treaty that it has given him with this nomination1, the world will be in serious trouble as well as the President.

Pursuant to the clause in the Constitution which empowers the President, "by and with the advice and consent of the Senate," to appoint most of the public officers of the United States, including the Judges of the Supreme Court, President Hoover nominated Mr. J. J. Parker as a Judge of that Court, and submitted his name to the Senate for confirmation. As a man of standing in his profession and in his party, who had served for about five years on the Bench of the United Stales Circuit Court, and as a citizen of the "New South," which, had not been represented on the Supreme Court Bench since the days of Chief Justice White (1910-21), Judge Parker's nomination seems to have been received with a general approval which was naturally keenest in the Southern States. But the Senate thought otherwise. It has exercised its right to veto the President's nominees to such a position, and by a vote of 41 to 39 told I Judge Parker that he may go back to his Circuit. , .

. This is, we are told, the first rejection of the kind in the' last thirtysix years. For the similar indignity which was ' inflicted upon' Mr. Hoover's predecessor it was necessary to go back more than fifty years to find a precedent. The Senator's rejection of President Coolidge's nomination of Mr. Charles Warren as Attorney-General was personally a graver affront, since it denied the President's right to the unrestricted choice of his own Cabinet. But to make an appointment to the highest Court in the country a political shuttlecock is from every other point of view a more deplorable proceeding. Mr. Coolidge, who on several occasions had not shrunk from rejecting or delaying the legislation of Congress by the use of. his own veto, made no attempt to get past the Senate's veto on the appointment of Mr. Warren. With so small a majority against him—the smallest; majority possible with^ an even number of voters —President Hoover may not be so ready to turn the other cheek to the smiter. The demands of his own dignity, the desire to stand weir with the "solid South" into which he made very successful1 inroads at the election, the approval of nomination by the Senators of both parties in all the States of Judge Parker's Circuit—North and South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, and Maryland, and the fear that. the submission to the Senate on this point would stimulate it to a more active hostility to his measures may well encourage President Hoover to persist. On the other hand, the "strenuous efforts" on behalf of the nomination which are ascribed to his lieutenants in the Senate show that he was not taken by surprise, and in a doubtful fight a reluctance to expose the Supreme Court to further bitter controversy will subject him to a handicap from which his opponents will not suffer. It is melancholy to read that the

first rejection of a President's nominee to the Supreme Court for more than a generation was

due chiefly to the bitter opposition of organised Labour and negro organisations.

Though we do not remember to have seen Judge Parker's name mentioned in connection with the trials arising from the terrible strikes, riots, and murders of which Gastoria was the centre, it looks as though some of the passions excited by those troubles I may have animated the opposition to Judge Parker's appointment, whether on account of his political views or, it may be, of some judicial decision. Even so, it is surprising to find that negro organisations should be credited with so much power in a controversy of this kind. Though in a country where the administration oi justice suffers in many of the States from the disastrous institution of elective Judges, the Federal Supreme Court has been kept remarkably free from political interference, complete immunity is impossible. In February the Senate devoted no less than four sittings to a debate on the President's nomination of Mr. C. E. Hughes to succeed the late Mr- Taft as Chief Justice. Admittedly a man of unblemished character and reputation, and a lawyer ofjhe highest possible qualifications. Mi. Hughes was attacked as likely to lean towards the Conservative side in his rulings.

I am of the opinion, said Senator Borah, that he feels that practically no restraint ought to be placed upon the vast corporate interests of the United States. lam of the opinion that he will go on the bench as Chief Justice, carrying with him the conviction that these efforts at restraint arc unwise.

Speaking on the 12th February, Senator Dill opened his speech in a striking fashion by calling attention to a "coincidence":

The Senate of the United States, on the clay marking the anniversary of the natal day of Abraham Lincoln, the greatest champion of human rights in the world since Christ walked upon the earth, considers whether or not it shall confirm the appointment of Charles E. Hughes, the greatest champion of property rights of our time, as Chief Justice of tho Supreme Court of the United States.

The Federal Supreme Court was placed as far away from politics as the Constitution could place it, and for a century and a half it has, except on rare occasions, been kept at a safe distance, but the public canvassing of the political creed of every, nominee will remove this protection if the recent tendencies of the Senate are not checked.