THE SUPREME COURT AND THE NEW DEAL
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.]
Sirs,—I think the writer of the leading article in The Spectator of May 31st, entitled " The Blow to the New Deal," was under some misapprehension concerning the recent decision of the United States Supreme Court that declared the National Recovery Act unconstitutional. As he says, the Court did hold that Congress had no right under the federal Constitution to delegate legislative authority to the President (or, through him, to private trade associations). But the decision went much farther. It added that Congress, itself, had no such power to regulate conditions of labour, as that body claimed under the inter-State commerce clause of the Constitution, on the ground that they affected articles handled in inter-State commerce. This important aspect of the decision, of which your writer apparently was not aware, invalidates his assumption that " Another procedure theoretically possible would be to take the codes seriatim and pass all their provisions through both Rouses of Congress."
I realize that the full text of the Supreme Court's decision probably was not available to the writer of your article and that the summary upon which he relied may have been faulty. But The Spectator is so' careful in its comment upon American affairs, that I thought I would take the liberty of calling your attention to this misconception. What the Supreme Court did, of course, was to rule that the federal government had no such authority to regulate business under the Constitution as the present administration had assumed. According to the Court, these particular regulatory powers reside with the several State Governments. The astonishing thing about the whole experiment, from the point of view of most authorities upon American constitutional law, is that the administration should ever have supposed the Constitution would be stretched to sanction any such departure from our federal system of government. It was no 'accident that all nine of the Supreme Court justices, joined in this adverse decision.
The impression that I have received from British comment upon the N.R.A. decision is that it generally tends to ignore the essential differences between a unitary and a federal system of government. The temptation to compare the powers of the central Governments of Great Britain and the United States, when writing for British readers, is natural enough, but nowhere have I seen any adequate attempt made to explain the important difference in the problems created by the mere size and variation of economic conditions in this country. So fai in the United States we have proceeded on the theory that a large measure of• governmental authority must be vested in the individual States, as the best method of meeting our particular needs. It may be that this theory should now be modified, in view of mechanical invention and economic development. But since the present theory is written into the federal Constitution, the high degree of centralized control implied by the National liecovery Act can only be achieved within the framework of the American system by amending the Constitution.—I am, Sir, yours, &c., The Kansas City Star, Kansas, Mo. IIENRY C. HAsKEir.e.
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