PLAN DROPPED

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 131, 4 June 1937, Page 9

PLAN DROPPED

U.S. SUPREME COURT

REORGANISATION SCHEME

CHANGED OUTLOOK

United Press .Association.—lJy Electric Tele

graph.—Copyright.' (Received June 4, 11.30 a.m.)

WASHINGTON, June 3.

President Roosevelt lias abandoned his proposals for Supreme Court reorganisation during the present session owing to opposition and the recent favourable decisions. Jhe question may be revived in 1938 if conditions should warrant it.

President Roosevelt's court reform plan, embodied in his, message to Congress on February 5, involved raising the number of Supreme Court Justices from nine (the present number) to a maximum of fifteen. It also contemplated power to retire Judges when they had reached the age of 70 years and had been on the Bench for 10 years. Another feature of the plan w=s direct appeal to the Supreme Court from an inferior Court on the subject of a constitutional issue. However, whereas the Court had decided against the New Deal in eleven out of thirteen principal cases before the beginning! of the present term, during the new term the Administration has won all seven major cases taken to the Court. Early in April it was stated that President Roosevelt had instructed the Democratic forces to increase their efforts to have his new programme enacted, partly because he is preparing to submit to Congress more reforms, abolishing child labour and regulating wages and hours on a national scale. Public hearings of the Senate Judiciary Committee on the Court plan were completed on April 24; but private consideration was expected to last until the end of last month. In the middle of last month Mr. Justice Van Devanter, a member of the so-called Conservative wing of the Supreme Court, who is 78, announced his retirement as from June 2.