New Features

Two in memoriam dinners were last week given in Washington. At one, 15 freshmen Senators who had supported the President's Court Bill, at least till near the last, mourned with the new Democratic leader, Senator Barkley. At the other, a happier affair, the Court Bill's opponents including Senators Wheeler, Burke, Mc-Carran, Clark, celebrated with famed Attorney Frank Hogan and Woodrow Wilson's one man brain trust, Joseph P. Tumulty. This second group of Senators celebrated not only the passing of the Old Court Bill but the birth of the New Court Bill whose swift enactment was expected.

Chief provisions of the new bill as reported by Senator McCarran from the Judiciary Committee:

i) In any court procedure in which the constitutionality of a Federal law is challenged, the court must notify the Attorney General. If the Attorney General then shows the court that the Government has "a legal interest or may have a probable interest"-in the case, he must be permitted to become a party to the case to present evidence, make arguments on the question of constitutionality.

2) In any case where a law is found unconstitutional an appeal may be taken directly to the Supreme Court, shall go on the Supreme Court docket within 60 days and be heard by the Supreme Court before any other type of case.

3) When any party asks for an injunction on the grounds of a law's unconstitutionally, the senior judge of the circuit in which the plea is made shall appoint a court of three judges, at least one of whom is a circuit judge, to hear the case.

4) Whenever the docket of any district court becomes overcrowded the senior judge of the circuit shall appoint a judge from another district to help clean up the accumulation of work. Or if there is no other district judge in the circuit who can be spared, the senior' circuit judge shall appeal to the Chief Justice of the U. S. who shall appoint a district judge from another circuit, preferably adjoining that where the need arises, to help out in the district concerned.

5) Judges designated to sit outside their regular bailiwicks shall get $10 a day for subsistence (instead of $5 a day as at present).

-Some suspicious New Dealers thought this phrase was a joke to make the new law ineffective. Drafters of the bill insisted it was just the contrary: inserted to make the law work, because a law giving the Attorney General the right to intervene in cases where the Government has no interest would be unconstitutional.

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