Supreme Court's Week

August at Washington, the U. S. Supreme Court last week handed down, among others, the following decisions:

Perovich. To U. S. Chief Justice William Howard Taft last week came a matter whose acquaintance he had first made as U. S. President in 1909. This was the case of Vuco Perovich, convicted of first degree murder in Alaska in 1905. After respites and appeals, President Taft saved Mr. Perovich from the gallows by commuting his sentence to life imprisonment.

Whereupon Mr. Perovich grumbled, protested. He preferred a death sentence to a life sentence. And, in 1925, a Kansas District Judge ruled that the presidential right to annul a sentence (by pardon) did not include the right to alter it (by commutation) without the prisoner's consent. Thus mercy became high-handed, clemency a usurpation. Furthermore, since Mr. Perovich was being illegally held, his detention could not continue, so he was released under a habeas corpus writ. At large, Mr. Perovich opened a barber shop, has spent the last two years law-abidingly wielding shears and razor.

Meanwhile the Kansas decision was appealed. Last week it turned up before the Supreme Court, the Chief Justice of which is, of course, the same William Howard Taft whose 1909 action constituted the point at issue. Dignified, fairminded, Chief Justice Taft took no part in the court's deliberations. But the Court upheld him, reversed the Kansas decision. It held that the pardoning power was part of the machinery of the law, that this machinery operates without regard to the consent of those affected. It held also that changing a death sentence to a life sentence was a legitimate part of the pardoning power, since a life sentence is commonly regarded as less severe than a death sentence, therefore, to some extent, a pardon of it.

Vuco Perovich, though still preferring gallows to cell, prepared to return to prison. As Associate Justice Holmes read the decision upholding the 1909 ruling, despatches reported that "Chief Justice Taft smiled broadly."

12 Miles. Rum-laden, the steamer Underwriter bobbed some months ago along the Atlantic Ocean, 34 miles from land. Rum-seeking, a Coast Guard vessel bobbed after. Eventually the Coast Guard boat caught the Underwriter, took from her 811 cases of whiskey.

Last week the Supreme Court, after hearing the argument of able Assistant U. S. Attorney General Mabel W. Willebrandt, held the capture legal, despite its having taken place outside the twelve-mile limit.

Kodak. "If it isn't an Eastman, it isn't a Kodak," says the Eastman Kodak Co., Kodaking as it goes. Recently the Federal Trade Commission, a federal investigating body, the precise scope of whose authority no-one has determined, objected to Eastman's recent purchase of three laboratories for the making of cinema films. The output of these three laboratories was greater than that of all other laboratories east of Chicago; the Commission alleged that they would result in throttling competition, ordered the Eastman Co. to dispose of them. The Eastman Co. refused. The Supreme Court endorsed the refusal, said, in effect: Keep your laboratories. Defeated, the Commission sought new fields of investigation.

Harvester Co. Charged with having failed to carry out a 1918 agreement to restore competitive conditions in its field, the International Harvester Co. was upheld by the Supreme Court. The opinion ruled that the International Harvester Company had not since 1918 restrained or suppressed trade nor had it controlled or dominated trade by price regulation.

Forthwith the Court adjourned until October, having disposed of more than 900 of some 1,150 cases docketed during the term. Outstanding decisions were: Canceling of the Elk Hills naval oil reserve leases; approving the Volstead Act limitation on liquor prescriptions and the Harrison antinarcotic act; affirming the President's power to remove postmasters and other statutory officials without consent of the Senate.