TRIAL BY JURY

As Judge Parker's elevation to the Supreme Court comes before the Senate for approval, liberals, labor, and Democrats ally to defeat the Hoover nominee. And it seems that what started as a quasi-political attack on a presidential appointment is turning into a battle over the fundamental principles of government. Backed by evidence of Judge Parker's hostile attitude towards trade unions and negro voting, the opponents of the North Carolina jurist claim that he will augment that element of the Court which interprets the law literally, rather than siding with that trio of dissenters, Holmes and Stone and Brandeis, who make law a means and not an end.

If the Supreme Court is to retain its function as the moulder of the Constitution in eventual accordance with the popular mandate, it is essential to appoint to it men of high quality and broad outlook. For example, the men who may one day sit in judgment on the Volstead Act ought to have in view impending disruption and obvious corruption as well as intricacies in wording of the law itself. And Judge Parker, from all that can be discovered, seems neither broadminded nor first-rate, and although certainly it is unfair for partisan purposes to criticize appointments to this tribunal certainly also, when men of large calibre are available, a second-rate Circuit Judge should not be promoted because North Carolina went Republican a year ago last fall.