Insulated Justice

Associate Justice Owen Josephus Roberts of the U. S. Supreme Court last week summoned circuit and district court judges of the Third Circuit to a conference at Atlantic City. There he discussed with them an impending change in the relation of U. S. courts to the U. S. Government.

Up to now, U. S. judges have had to look for money to the Department of Justice, whose fiscal 1938 budget includes some $18,000,000 for the Judiciary. Since the Department has more cases in those courts than any other agency or person, judges and lawyers alike have long felt there was something vaguely improper about this procedure. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes was for a bill introduced in the last Congress to set up a separate court budget. Then he reconsidered, quashed the measure. What gave him pause was the awful thought that a comptroller appointed by him might some day turn crook and thus impugn the Supreme Court itself.

Mr. Hughes's qualms have lately been eased. A committee of eminent judges and attorneys (including President Arthur T. Vanderbilt of the snooty Judiciariat Society) has drawn up a compromise whereby the U. S. Judiciary's financial officer will be safely insulated from the Supreme Justices. Senator Henry Fountain Ashurst expects to have this measure passed soon after Congress meets in January. The judges therefore must figure their need for the coming fiscal year, and Justice Roberts asked those in his bailiwick to do so last week. Other justices presumably will do likewise in the circuits where they oversee legal business.

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