The Supreme Court

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

"If the President's appointments" to the Supreme Court "have made the Court 'less liberal' than before, the nation will soon know." So writes William Simmons in last Monday's CRIMSON.

The nation will know as soon as it stops to think a minute--and so will Mr. Simmons--what the character of the present Court is.

The Court has ruled against the contention of the Communist Eugene Dennis that the jury which convicted him of contempt of Congress could not be impartial because it included Government employees. Yet not long before it had found that a Government worker is not an impartial juror in a case involving the dope trade! It's unfair to the Court majority to assume it is ignorant of the terror of the left which is instilled in Government workers by the continuing "loyalty" purges. The only interpretation that can be put on the decision in the Dennis case is that the Justices are subject to the same terror, to the point where justice is forgotten. What has happened to the right to a fair trial? It went that-a-way!

The Court has refused to review the conviction of the Hollywood Ten for contempt of Congress. Ducking the responsibility of saying why, the Court has in effect okayed the Un-American Committee's pat routine for jailing the opposition. The Committee simply calls a man up to the stand and asks him if he "is or ever has been." If the man is a Communist who, like most such, cannot reveal his membership without losing his job, or if he's simply a decent person, Communist or not, who refuses to be party to political suppression, he gives no answer; off to jail he goes. This procedure has been swung into action now against an inconvenient labor union in Hawaii. There is hardly any pretense that the Committee is gathering information. It's trying to get rid of Hawaiians whose union activities it doesn't like.

Don't be impatient. The Committee will got back to us main-landers again soon--unless the Mundt-Ferguson bill passes, in which case the formalities in jailing left-wingers will be much simplified. Or unless the American people tell their Congressmen in no uncertain terms that they still value political liberty.

The people will have to speak up--Mr. Simmons, I trust, with the rest--because these days the Supreme Court doesn't seem to. These days it rubber-stamps political persecution. Chandler Davis 4G