The Demands of Trivia

Scolded in recent months by critics ranging from Southern Congressmen to the American Bar Association, the U.S. Supreme Court last week was scolded by one of its own members: peppery Associate Justice Felix Frankfurter. The occasion: a 6-2 Supreme Court decision to the effect that a North Dakota farmer may have died by accident rather than suicide, and that his widow could therefore collect on a double-indemnity insurance clause.

To Felix Frankfurter the case was trivial, and the court should not have wasted its time on it. Said Frankfurter, dissenting from the majority: "This is a case that should never have been here. It will set no precedents. It will guide no lawyers. It will guide no courts." Bothering with such cases can only work "inroads on the time available for due study and reflection of those classes of cases for the adjudication of which this court exists." Thus the Supreme Court cannot devote itself as it should to "expounding and stabilizing principles of law for the benefit of the people of the country."

Two days later, Chief Justice Earl Warren, addressing the American Law Institute in Washington, offered an indirect defense. Said he: "We have every reason to believe that at the last session of this term we will be able to say, as the court has said every year since 1928, when it acquired the certiorari* jurisdiction, that all cases ready for argument have been heard and decided." But by Warren's own figures, Frankfurter had a point. At last reckoning, the Supreme Court had disposed of 1,415 cases during its present term, compared with 1,391 at the same stage of the previous term. Yet 1,836 cases remained on its dockets, an increase of 52 over the same time last year.

* A writ by which a court of review brings up a case from a lower court. To reduce the Supreme Court's work load of unimportant cases, Congress in 1925 greatly increased the court's power to decide which appellate cases it would hear. By 1929 the court had cut through its backlog.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.