Definitions

When the Supreme Court adjourned last week it put behind it a milestone in U. S. judicial history. But milestones, evidences as they are of progress, are not necessarily landmarks standing on the high places of the historical scene. Only rarely does the Supreme Court settle a case which is obviously a turning point, a judicial epoch. None the less from day to day and decision to decision change and progress are continually developing, of which the full significance may not be generally realized until later.

Such was the work from October to June of the nine keen-minded gentlemen who sit in black robes in the old Senate Chamber of the Capitol. Some of the cases decided show the direction of judicial development.

There was the case of Schlesinger v. Wisconsin, in which was brought into question the constitutionality of a Wisconsin inheritance-tax law which classed as inheritances all gifts made within six years of the donor's death. The question the Court posed itself was whether it was reasonable to presume that all gifts made within six years of death were made in contemplation of death to evade the tax. The majority declared that the assumption was unreasonable, the law invalid. Justices Holmes, Brandeis and Stone dissented, saying the decision on reasonableness should rest with the state legislature.

The same Justices dissented, on the grounds that the state legislature might have good reason, when the majority of the Court held that a Pennsylvania statute forbidding the use of shoddy in making comfortables was unreasonable, therefore void (TIME, March 15).

The Court likewise held invalid a law of Washington which was used in quarantining the state against alfalfa shipments (which it was feared might bring in the alfalfa weevil), because the Court held that the state law conflicted with an Act of Congress placing the power to establish such quarantines with the Secretary of Agriculture.

But in defining state authority, the Court did not only limit. In the case of the Pacific American Fisheries v. Alaska, the Court held that the territory could legally compel fish canneries which pack large amounts of fish to pay a higher tax per pound than canneries with smaller outputs. The Court declared that the tax was fair because it tended to preserve the subject (fish) of taxation.

In several cases the legal relation of corporations, especially public utilities, to the Government was enlarged upon. The Illinois Bell Telephone Co., for example, was granted relief from low rates, after its application for increased rates had not been acted upon by a state board two years after it was made. Again the Court refused several similar actions where the public utility company had not made formal application for higher rates to state authorities. In another case the Court allowed the New York Telephone Co. to include as part of its property entitled to a reasonable return a reserve fund built up over a number of years and invested in its plant. An unreasonably low rate, the Court said, cannot be imposed now because of profits made in the past, any more than a high rate can be justified now because of past losses.

The rights of individuals were also clarified. In the case of Agnello v. the U. S., several persons had been arrested for conspiracy to violate the antinarcotic law. The home of one of them was then searched without a warrant and cocaine found. The Court held that the search was illegal and therefore that the use of the cocaine found as evidence against the man was improper.

So, little by little, from definition to definition, sifting each case down to a little question of legal right and answering "yes" or "no," the Court goes on season by season developing the social institutions of the country.