The Petal Paper

Blaming The Court

What "trouble and unrest" is it that Senator Everett Jordan accuses the Supreme Court of creating, and that he says "the people are not going to stand for?"

Senator Jordan told Asheville Rotarians that the Court was getting so far out of line that Congress is in duty bound to place on it some sort of restrictions." The

Court is trying to act as "lord and master over purely local problems," the Senator charged, with "chaos and strife" resulting.

Perhaps Senator Jordan is referring to the tragic situation at Little Rock. If so, he is gravely oversimplifying a tremendously complex situation. He is entirely

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Blaming Court...

overlooking Governor Faubus' defiance and demagoguery. The mob response of too many Arkansans, and the hasty measures of President Eisenhower. Now, the Arkansas legislature has joined the governor to enact legislation that cannot help but confuse further an already stultifying situation.

If Senator Jordan may also think that Virginia is undergoing "chaos and strife." Indeed, it very nearly is - but that would hardly be the case if Senator Byrd and Governors Stanley and Almond had not led the state into the kind of "massive resistance" that can do little else but close the public schools. Arlington, for instance, might have accomplished school desegregation voluntarily several years ago, had it not been for the state-interference that now threatens a school shutdown in the suburbs of the nation's capital.

Many people wish to curb the Supreme Court for reasons other than its racial segregation decisions. In ruling out the State Department's right to withhold passports, some contend, the Court is giving aid and comfort to the Communists. Others say that by tossing out Pennsylvania's anti-subversion laws, on the grounds that Federal statutes make them unnecessary, the Court is crippling the fight against communism.

Other decisions of the Court have brought equal fire from other sources. What most of the opponents, including Senator Jordan, seem to be saying is that they do not agree with these opinions. That is an American privilege -- but what "chaos and strife" there has been surely results not from the decisions but from the unrestrained and vitriolic character of the opposition to them.

-North Carolina, slowly to be sure, is finding ways to cope with the Court's desegregation decision without either chaos or strife. So are 41 other states. This does not mean that all of them like the course the Court has decreed for them: indeed, North Carolina and other states are still taking legal steps to preserve some forms of racial segregation. Yet, good faith is being shown in the effort to conform to the Court's interpretation of the law.

If nothing else, this would indicate that the "trouble and unrest" which Senator Jordan blames on the Supreme Court decisions actually springs from other causes. Perhaps the most charitable view of Senator Jordan's speech is that he is, after all, running for election and is likely to say some things that later he would like to forget.

Winston-Salem Journal