Pocket Veto

When Calvin Coolidge, then U. S. President, pushed aside Senate bill No. 3185 of the 69th Congress on June 24, 1926, and let it lie untouched before him until July 3, when the Congress adjourned, he little thought that he was laying the groundwork for a test case on a Presidential procedure more than a century old--the old procedure of Pocket Veto.

Last week the same bill arose from the dead before the U. S. Supreme Court and so important seemed the issue at stake that Attorney General William DeWitt Mitchell, reverting to his old role of Solicitor-General, hurried to the Capitol to appear before the court as the President's advocate.

The bill itself was trifling: the Okonogan Indians of Washington sought legislative permission to sue the U. S. in the Court of Claims on a land dispute. Congress granted the permission, but President Coolidge withheld consent. The Indians were last week asking the Supreme Court to validate their permission by denying the President the power to kill a bill by pocketing it, except after a final adjournment of the Congress--that is, an adjournment on a March 4, after a second session.

U. S. legislative history contains some 120 measures similarly buried away under pocket vetoes since President' Madison, in 1812, first devised this oblique method of shelving legislation during the life of a Congress. A most recent and notable pocket veto was President Coolidge's disposal of the bill for Government operation of the Muscle Shoals plant (TIME, June 11). Other pocketed bills which would become law if the Okonogan Indians should win their case include a prohibition against the useless slaughter of buffalo (1874) and the acceleration of the Missouri-California mails from 38 to 30 days (1859).

The pocket veto practice is covered by Section 7, Article 1 of the U. S. Constitution: "If any bill shall not be returned by the President within ten days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the same shall be a law, in like manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their adjournment prevent its return, in which case it shall not be a law."

The Supreme Court is asked to interpret the words "by their adjournment." The pocket veto is indisputably valid when Congress, by final adjournment, expires on March 4 of odd years.