Thomas Reed Powell, in Leverett House Speech, Calls Supreme Court Either Stupid or Crooked

"Our supreme court must be either stupid or crooked," declared Thomas Reed Powell, newly appointed associate of Leverett House and professor of Constitutional Law in the Harvard Law School.

"When they say that any law is arbitrary or unreasouable, they must mean that it appears so to them. The judges of the supreme court talk of the Holy Ghost that hovers over their decisions. This Holy Ghost is merely the odd man of the nine justices."

He declared that a knowledge of constitutional law means only the ability to look up the past records of the judges and to predict how they will vote. "It is always the court, not the constitution, which decides every case."

Powell predicted that the supreme court would declare the A.A.A. unconstitutional. "They will dale to do this only because of the fact that it has served its present purposes. The Supreme Court ventured to outlaw the N.R.A. when they realized that it had already become defunet."

In commenting on the Teachers' Oath Bill of Massachusetts. Powell said that he was glad to take an oath to suppert the Consitution. "It has always supported me."

He believes that the legislature has the right to tell the teachers what they may or may not teach, but that it transcended its rights by making it innovatory to take an oath, thus bringing in the "pains of Hellfire." "It was unconstitutional for them to do this," he added, "for two reasons, cruel and unusual punishment and extra territoriality."

In his introduction he said, "Sozie of you men have will probably be going into an intellectual life. Others will go into law."

He quoied the Railway Pension Law as an example of a case which the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional on purely projudicial grounds.