There Ought to Be a Law

Supreme Court justices frequently interpret the Constitution, occasionally expand on it, and sometimes make a wide end run around it. Last week Associate Justices William O. Douglas and Robert H. Jackson tried something different: they wrote an opinion lobbying for an amendment to change it. In a formal dissent to a decision in the case of Alabama's presidential electors,* Douglas and Jackson took their stand with those who want to abolish the whole antiquated system of electing the President and Vice President of the U.S. by state electoral votes, rather than by straight popular vote.

"As an institution," said the dissenting opinion, "the electoral college suffered atrophy almost indistinguishable from rigor mortis ... At its best, it is a mystifying and distorting factor in presidential elections which may resolve a popular defeat into an electoral victory. At its worst, it is open to local corruption and manipulation ... To abolish it and substitute direct election of the President ... would seem ... a gain for simplicity and integrity of our governmental processes."

* In which the majority held (5-2) that the Alabama State Democratic Executive Committee has a right to bar from the ballot any candidate for presidential elector who refuses to swear an oath to support the nominees of the Democratic National Convention.

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