Liberal Justice

The liberalism of the Supreme Court, much impugned when it nullified the District of Columbia minimum wage law for women, was apparently revived by two of its latest acts. One was to decline to consider the constitutionality of the Sheppard-Towner Bill for maternity welfare instruction. This disposes of the bill only temporarily, however, and it may again come before the Court. The other was to declare unconstitutional the forbidding of instruction in foreign languages in elementary schools, public, private or parochial.

The two justices who dissented from the latter decision were Sutherland and Holmes. Mr. Sutherland is rated a conservative, but Mr. Holmes is usually classified as a liberal. The case was that of a parochial school teacher who had taught German to a ten-year-old child. He was convicted under the Nebraska law and his conviction upheld by the State Supreme Court. The decision of the highest court in the land was based on the Fourteenth Amendment, which declares that no state shall "deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law." The Court held the Nebraska law an infraction of the individual's liberty. The decision invalidates similar laws in 20 other states.