Douglas In, Streaker In

Just turned 77, hale again after his first absence (six weeks) because of illness in nine years, Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes last week returned to the U. S. Supreme Court. For his first chore he had the pleasant duty of swearing in the Court's newest and youngest member, ex-SEC Chairman William Orville Douglas, 40. As Franklin Roosevelt's fourth appointee took his seat at the extreme left, he rubbed his nose, smiled at his wife and nine-year-old son, Bill Jr. Deprived while on the bench of his usual cigaret, Justice Douglas nervously twiddled a red rubber band as Justice Roberts read two momentous decisions.

In the case of U. S. v. Strecker (TIME, Feb. 20), the Court had to decide whether past membership in the Communist Party of the U. S. constitutes ground for deportation of an unnaturalized alien. The alien in the case is Galician-born Joseph George Strecker, a coal-digger who became a restaurant proprietor in Hot Springs, Ark. and there dallied with Communism to the extent of joining the party, but who paid dues only once. Last week the Court ruled 6-to-2 (Justices McReynolds and Butler dissenting) that past membership in the Communist Party does not of itself justify deportation, ordered Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins to release Joe Strecker.

If Fanny Perkins was glad to be rid of Joe Strecker, she was sorely disappointed by the decision's effect on the even more troublesome case of C. I. O.'s Australian-born Harry Bridges. For the Court, in ruling out past membership in subversive organizations as a cause for ejecting aliens, definitely ruled in membership 1) at the time an alien enters the U. S., or 2) at the time deportation proceedings are begun. Thus the decision which was supposed to settle Alien Bridges' status increased the pressure on Secretary Perkins to seize him, convict him of being a Communist despite his denials, ship him away.

Justice Roberts, having his biggest day in court since he switched over to the liberal bloc in 1937, read yet another opinion of No. 1 significance. Three years ago it fell to him to knock out the New Deal's first AAA, partly on the ground that the U. S. Government cannot constitutionally control the production of farms. Ruling last week on the 1938 Agricultural Adjustment Act, Owen Roberts held for a majority of six that its provisions authorizing Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace to limit the amount of tobacco which any grower may sell do not limit production itself, therefore are constitutional. Also affected: cotton, corn, wheat, rice.

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