THE KEYS OF JUSTICE

The decision of Mr. Emory Buckner, the new United States District Attorney in the New York district, to "padlock" restaurants selling liquor involves more issues than that of prohibition enforcement. Aside from the question of constitutionality, the extension of injunctions to cover this special field may bring all injunctions into disrepute.

It is true that the padlock method of enforcement, by which property is literally locked up under court injunction for a six-month period, gives the enforcement officers the most effective local weapon against liquor sellers. As Mr. Buckner points out, the normal trial-by-jury method would require ten years to clear the present calendars of the courts in New York city, but judges listening to injunctions could do it in less than half a year. The use of the injunction, however, is open to grave abuses. It is judge-made law, to be used when there is clearly no redress through the normal process. In labor disputes, injunctions have become the best weapon of the employer, and their use has become more and more arbitrary. In the extension of the injunction to prohibition enforcement, however, the shoe is on the other foot, and the employer is hit hardest. Consequently, owners as well as workers may work together to overthrow the injunction, or at least to limit its use to equity and to prohibit it in cases which properly come under jury law.

In their zeal to enforce the law, prohibition agents have already given severe jolts to the constitutional freedom from unwarranted search. Mr. Buckner's decision to employ the injunction, however praiseworthy as a showing of efficiency, comes between the people and their right to trial by jury