Relief for Lawyers?

Francis Eugene Walter of Easton, Pa. is what most other U. S. Representatives would like to be: a Congressman who can afford to play statesman. Towheaded, brainy, Democratic Mr. Walter is a director of the Easton National Bank, a successful lawyer who gets along equally well with Bethlehem Steel Corp. and with Bethlehem workers, who abound in his bailiwick. By conviction ("I believe in it") and vote (for TVA, Wagner Act, etc.) he is a confirmed New Dealer.

Most people outside of Pennsylvania never heard of Mr. Walter until last week. Then they heard less about him than about his Walter-Logan Bill (cosponsor: Kentucky's late Senator Marvel Mills Logan) and its tempestuous passage through the House. They heard nothing about a Kentucky colonel who had more to do with the bill than Mr. Walter did. The colonel: Ollie Roscoe McGuire, chairman of the American Bar Association's Special Committee on Administrative Law, and a viewer-with-alarm of U. S. bureaucracy.

"The most important bill to come before Congress in 100 years," Colonel McGuire called his (and Mr. Walter's) bill. Why this could be said without extravagant exaggeration, Columnist Mark Sullivan explained: "It [the bill] goes to the heart of what is troubling this country and the world--the conflict between the rights of man and the authority of Government. ... [It provides] that where-ever an agency of Government attempts to exercise power over a citizen . . . every man shall be entitled to his day in court." Nobody quarreled with this objective, nor disputed its implication. But four days of debate crammed the Congressional Record with evidence that the Walter-Logan Bill would give so many citizens so many days in so many courts that their Government would never have a day out of court. The question posed to Congress was whether a citizen can always have his day, and still have a Government able to do its complex job.

Messrs. Walter, McGuire & friends would have scores of new Federal boards hear petitions from "any person . . . aggrieved by a decision of any officer or employe of any [Federal] agency."* Chairmen of these tribunals would have to be lawyers. They and the already laden courts (on appeal from the boards) would have to hear any & all complaints against nearly anything which the affected portion of the U. S. Government's 920,310 employes have done, may do or decide to do. As an extreme instance: any U. S. employe could appeal against demotion, discharge, changes in the Civil Service Commission's innumerable rules.

Illinois's New Dealing Kent Keller proposed to retitle Mr. Walter's measure: "The lawyers' emergency relief bill to end unemployment in the legal profession and for no other purpose." The independent Brookings Institution in Washington found that the bill ". . . would seriously retard and hamper the processes of government . . . leave the administration of a statute open to obstructive and dilatory tactics . . . [be] contrary to our basic concepts of the judicial process . . . demoralizing Government departments, destroying their efficiency, delaying the transaction of Government business to an excessive and intolerable degree, and greatly enhancing the cost of government."

Said sane, judicious Hatton Sumners of Texas, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee: "Gentlemen get up here and talk about how many judges we must have [to administer the act]. We should have thought about that before we brought these powers and duties up here from the States. . . . We have only this choice: either to turn the American people loose, subject to the governmental power of an appointed personnel ... or we have got to make it possible for the citizen to resort to the only place under the Anglo-Saxon system of government that an aggrieved person can go to, and that is the courts. . . ."

The bill passed the House, 282-to-97 (enough votes to override a Presidential veto). Last year the Senate-passed the bill (when Majority Leader Alben Barkley dozed), later reneged (when he awoke). This year it has an even-Stephen chance. President Roosevelt has indicated that he is against it. Should he come to think the Republicans can win the 1940 election, he could do them no nastier trick than to sign Mr. Walter's bill..

*Exceptions: Army & Navy, Interstate Commerce Commission, customs and patents administrations, Federal Trade Commission, Departments of State and Justice, Federal lending agencies, some others.

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