Decisions

Among the decisions handed down by the Supreme Court last week, were the following:

Michigan v. Wisconsin. Boundary disputes between states are not so rare today as might be expected. In October the Supreme Court opened its autumn session by settling a controversy between Oklahoma and Texas (TIME, Oct. 25). Last week it drew a new boundary line between Michigan and Wisconsin, states which have lived side by side for more than a century. The new line, running from Lake Superior to Green Bay, is only a slight variation of the old and does not change the ownership of any important cities. It does, however, settle the ownership of numerous islands in Green Bay. The costs of the suit will be divided equally between the two states. Technically, neither won.

Federal Trade Commission. Of all Government organizations which attempt to regulate business, the Federal Trade Commission seems to vex the most businessmen. So, last week, many were pleased when the Supreme Court ruled that the Federal Trade Commission was without authority "to require one who has secured actual title and possession of physical property before proceedings were begun against it to dispose of the same, although secured through an unlawful purchase of stock."

Swift & Co., meat packers, had successfully contended that the Commission was without authority to require them to give up the property of two competitors in Alabama and Georgia, which they had acquired by stock purchases. The Supreme Court decision was not unanimous; Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes, Louis Dembitz Brandeis, Harlan Fiske Stone dissented. The Thatcher Manufacturing Co. of Philadelphia won its suit involved in the same decision, though the Western Meat Co. of California lost.

Price Fixing. The Government's war on price-fixing received a rebuff last week when the Supreme Court upheld the right of the General Electric Co. to set both a sale and resale price on all incandescent electric bulbs manufactured under its patents. The General Electric Co. had entered into a manufacturing and selling arrangement with the Westinghouse Co. on this basis. The Government suit had contended that such a scheme was in violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Law of 1890, and that a decision upholding it would destroy the force of the law in all cases involving patents. Chief Justice William Howard Taft wrote the decision which upheld the action of a lower Federal court in Ohio.

One Raymond W. Henderson, almost totally blind attorney from California, amazed the nine black-robed justices by his able delivery of arguments and ready replies to all questions. All the while, his fingers fluttered over notes and indexes made in raised lettering. He was pleading a case which challenged the validity of the California Syndicalism law.