U. S. v. Schechters

In the shadowy little semicircular chamber of the U. S. Supreme Court last week, NIRA at last went to its great trial. For Donald Randall Richberg, it was, indeed, a momentous occasion. As a special assistant to the Attorney General, he appeared in wing collar and cutaway to lead the Federal defending forces against Joseph, Alexander, Martin and Aaron Schechter.

The Brothers Schechter operate the two largest jobbing plants in the $60,000,000-a-year Brooklyn live poultry business. They stoutly refused to let the Blue Eagle roost among their chickens, so the Government indicted them on 19 counts. Two trial courts found the Schechters guilty of violating the fair trade provisions of the poultry code: selling diseased fowl; filing false sales volume and price scale reports; permitting butchers to select the chickens they wanted killed, in spite of the code's insistence on "straight killing." But neither lower court found the Schechters outside the law because they worked employes longer than code hours, paid them less than code wages. Both courts decided that the code's labor provisions affected an intrastate affair with which the Federal Government had no right to meddle. Jointly the Schechters and the Government appealed to the Supreme Court on the points which each had lost.

Arguments. The Government's position that the Constitution's commerce clause empowered Congress to regulate intrastate business when it "affected" interstate affairs had by now become classic. But this time the classic argument was being put by the New Deal's high legal command. Counsel Richberg's gist: "If 1,000 automobiles are obstructing traffic, it isn't necessary to prove conspiracy in order to produce order by putting traffic in lanes. That is the regimentation which we have heard so much about. If it were not for regimentation, reckless drivers would make traffic impossible. It is regimentation which brings order out of chaos and protects essential liberties."

Schechter reply, put by Frederick H. Wood, a Government associate in the gold clause cases, was no less orthodox. If the Government could regulate one intrastate business, it could regulate all businesses and, carried to its logical conclusion, the concept would ultimately find Congress in charge of all human activity.

Questions. Knuckling down to cases, the nine old gentlemen on the bench began to ask questions with the amused detachment of sages from the moon. To begin with, they wanted to know all about the chicken business. Justice Sutherland was told that in "straight killing" the customer buys the contents of a crate sight unseen. If a customer wants a half crate, "you just break the box in half."

"All the chickens," mused Justice Sutherland, "might be in one end."

What Justice McReynolds, leader of the four-man conservative wing, wanted to know about was by what empiricism had the New Deal arrived at "fair trade" and labor "standards." Solicitor General Stanley Reed, making his maiden appearance as such before the Court, explained: "The only standard is what industry considers unfair, plus the judgment of the President as to whether they are fair trade provisions." Next day Counsel Richberg took over the ordeal, added that fair trade standards were established in accordance with "the common law" and with those standards which the industries "recognized before codes were adopted."

With this information, the Court closed its hearings, recessed while it studied the problem of reconciling NIRA with the Constitution. Expected was a decision before June 16, last day of NRA's present legal life.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.