UPHOLDS LA FOLLETTE ON SUPREME COURT ISSUE

The following is a condensation of an article by John J. Lentz, former Congressman from Ohio.

Why should we, living in a republic that pretends to be a government of the people, by the people, for the people, be imposed upon by the oft repeated assertion that a Supreme Judge is beyond criticism and beyond correction? How can the election or appointment of a questionable attorney to a place among the judiciary make him so great and make his decisions so pure and so wise that other rational men are denied the right to consider or criticize or weigh the value of any decree or decision of any Supreme Judge when Supreme Courts are composed of fallible men elected or appointed by fallible electors and fallible executives through fallible partisan and political influence?

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Of the 96 Senators in the Senate 65 are lawyers and former judges, as are also 300 of the 435 Congressmen. In round figures two-thirds of both Houses of Congress are lawyers, and it is perfectly safe to say that among these 350 odd lawyers and judges in the two branches of Congress there are many better lawyers or at least as good lawyers as are now on the Supreme Bench of the nation. . . . Yes, it would be safe to say that there are more good lawyers in the House and Senate today than have sat on the Supreme Bench of the United States in its entire history. . . .

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There are nearly 200 Congressmen and Senators who represent other professions, other business interests and employments and in their many lines of thought and experience they have developed reason and logic and many of them are as capable of solving our problems of government and general welfare as are the lawyers and the judges. . . . Many of these Congressmen and Senators are men who were educated in the University of Hard Knocks, and they are just as well qualified to think and vote on such questions of general welfare as the income tax or child slavery or other forms of slavery, as are the men who wear the gown and sit on the bench. It is high time for these critics to learn that this is a representative government and that the laws are to be made by the 531 Congressmen and Senators and not by one President or one Judge.

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How many intelligent men and women today respect the 5 to 4 decision made by the Supreme Court on the income tax after one of those judges rolled over in bed one night and changed his mind and found unconstitutional the law which a short time prior he had held to be constitutional? How many of the men and women of the best heart and the best brain in this republic are today impressed with the sanctity and the infallibility of the Supreme Court decision on child labor, which held by a 5 to 4 vote that the law was unconstitutional? What critic has a right to say that the people have no right to resent and repudiate such a decision as that of our present Supreme Court in its effort to perpetuate child slavery? If there is any special virtue or sanctity in the opinion and oath of 5 of the 9 lawyers who happen to sit on a bench, how much more virtue and sanctity should there be in the Congress opinion and oath of the 350 lawyers and judges who sit in the Congress and Senate of the United States? What body of men on the face of the earth is so well qualified to consider the constitutionality of legislation as the 531 members of our National Congress?

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It took us eighteen years to add the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution to right the wrong done by the fallible judge who changed his mind one night on the income tax. Recently we have had the votes of more than two-thirds of the Congressmen and two-thirds of the Senators repudiate the decision of a fifth fallible judge on the question of child slavery: and now we are in the midst of submitting to the 48 states the humane. God-given amendment in behalf of the childhood of the nation. . . . How much better it would be if the Constitution had been originally written or amended so as to permit two-thirds of both Houses of Congress to over-rule the one judge, just as they may over-rule the one President. The two-thirds of each of these two bodies come nearer being a correct expression of the best judgment of the best people of the forty-eight states and better than could ever be secured in the dilatory, lumber-wagon delays and tardiness of the present method of bringing the laws of the land up to the moral purpose of present civilization, and let us not continue the delays experienced in adopting the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth amendments.

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Can any sane citizen or intelligent voter look calmly at these six decisions of a divided court of 5 to 4 and not discover that by the vote of one judge many acts of Congress have been nullified by a fallible, life tenure Supreme Judge!

It is just as easy for a crooked lawyer to get onto the Bench as it is for a crooked clergyman to get into the pulpit or a crooked doctor to get into the practice of medicine or a crooked banker to get into the confidence of his community, and yet the crooked lawyer may be the deciding judge in a divided court.

To those presenting the though that the bulwark of our liberty is in the Supreme Court with power granted the fifth judge to nullify or ratify the legislative act of 531 Congressmen and Senators, whose combined conscience and intelligence ought to be 531 times as great as that of such a judge. I reply that Great Britian has for centuries promoted democracy and liberty and she has never had a constitution to be reviewed or repudiated by any kind of a Supreme Court. Even the House of Lords is today subject to the will of the House of Commons, and Goldwin Smith well said that "in the last 300 years of English history no reform ever originated in the House of Lords"; and it is just as true that no reform ever originated in the Supreme Court of the United States but the progress of democracy and civilization has been held back by the Supreme Court's decisions in favor of property rights of man, woman and child.

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Mazzini, the greatest of Italian democrats, has given the world the best definition when he defined democracy as "The progress of all under the leadership of the wisest and the best"; and it is as true today as it was when he pronounced those immortal words and it is a safe rule by which to judge our own legislators in our National Congress. That body consists of 531 of the leaders of 48 states and 435 Congressional districts. They are the chosen men of the hundred and thirteen millions of our people. Their conscience is as good as that of any of their critics. Their means of acquiring information on public questions is greater than that of any of their critics. Their moral purpose is the moral purpose of their respective Congressional and Senatorial districts or States. They constitute the safest exponent and barometer of the hopes, and ambitions of the manhood and the womanhood and the childhood of this great republic.