Swift Court

Last week the Supreme Court ran out of work. To the amazement of attendants and onlookers it was forced to adjourn for two days to give breathless attorneys a chance to catch up. Cases were scheduled on its calendar for oral argument throughout the week but by Thursday the court, geared up to fresh efficiency by Chief Justice Hughes, had heard them all and no others were ready for presentation. For once the highest tribunal was functioning faster than the lawyers practicing before it. After its next meeting the court regularly adjourned for three weeks to ponder cases heard, write opinions.

A decade or so ago it took roughly a year to get a case before the Supreme Court, another year to bring it to argument and perhaps a third year to get an opinion. Today, under new rules, the court decides within a week whether or not it will grant a review, hears argument within a month or so, renders a decision within the term. When the court first sat last month for its 143rd term, it carried over 113 cases from last June and received 251 new ones (none of large political moment) accumulated during the summer. In a week it swept 103 cases off its docket by refusing to hear their details.

Last week one of the high-backed black chairs next to Chief Justice Hughes was empty. Associate Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, 90, was home with an attack of lumbago. Though he later returned to the bench, his absence caused a tremor of apprehension to run through the court. His colleagues had noticed that Mr. Justice Holmes's shoulders were a little more stooped, that his step was a little more feeble, that he sat and rose with a little more difficulty. During this term Mr. Justice Holmes has been more silent, less smiling than usual. Rarely now does he interrupt an arguing attorney with a barbed question or a comment flashing with wit. He is, his eight friends on the bench now sadly agree, aging.

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