"Oyez, Oyez, Oyez"

The eight black-robed figures sank down with gloomy dignity behind the long bench. Duplicates in wrinkled old flesh of the classic busts of their predecessors niched in the walls around them, the eight fine faces peered out through the shadows of the courtroom. Then the crier, in sharply pressed cutaway, rapped his gavel once and announced: "Oyez, oyez, oyez! All persons having business before the Honorable, the Supreme Court of the United States, are admonished to draw near and give their attention, for the Court is now sitting. God save the United States and this honorable Court."

Thus the U. S. Supreme Court began a session which will be its last in the old Capitol quarters, which will not end until June and which is expected to be the most epochal since the stormy days of Chief Justice John Marshall.

First day's business, chiefly the admittance of young lawyers to practice before the Supreme bar, was concluded in 25 min. Then frosty-bearded Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes led his associates to the White House to notify the President that the watchdogs of the Constitution were back on guard. With mingled feelings of respect and speculation President Roosevelt ran his eye over them. Were they for him or against him? Would one or more retire soon? Even the eldest, 77-year-old Louis Dembitz Brandeis, seemed in the best of health and spirits.

Last Christmas Franklin Roosevelt's candidate for a vacancy would have been Hiram Johnson of California. Last week he had his eye on Walter P. Stacy. Appointed Chief Justice of North Carolina when he was 40, Judge Stacy has made a record for himself in the New Deal by his chairmanship of the National Steel Labor Relations Board. With the other two members of the.Steel Board, he was drafted to the Textile Labor Relations Board (TIME, Oct. 8).

On the Supreme Court docket, which the Justices were culling during their recess last week, are some 400 cases. Of these, some 300 will be eliminated on jurisdictional grounds when hearings begin this week. And of the 100-odd cases which will appear on the original calendar for the session, three were the first New Deal legal cases to reach their final destination.

Two were "hot oil" cases involving Section 9C of the Recovery Act, authorizing restriction and prorating.

One was calculated to test the Constitutionality of the law abrogating payment of contracts in gold. It was a suit brought against Baltimore & Ohio R. R. by a bondholder.

But even more important than this fistful of judicial dynamite is a host of other New Deal cases which for the past year have been sifting up through the lower courts.

On a short, incomplete and spotty record, the Supreme Court is said to be disposed, by the thinnest of margins, to take a broad view of recovery legislation. Widely advertised as victories for the Administration were the Minnesota mortgage moratorium (TIME. Jan. 15) and New York milk cases. In each instance the Supreme Court lined up 5-to-4 in favor of the New Deal: Chief Justice Hughes, Justices Brandeis. Stone, Roberts, Cardozo against dissenting Justices Sutherland, Butler, McReynolds, Van Devanter. But thoughtful conservatives point out that those cases did not involve Federal legislation and that since the laws in question were passed by Legislatures, the additionally ticklish question of State rights was to be considered. Furthermore, the legislation under scrutiny was of an emergency nature. The court may balk when the time comes to pass on the more permanent legislation New Dealers want graven in the statute books.

Lest this occur, on the eve of the court's convening. President Roosevelt passed it a broad and hopeful hint when in his sixth "fireside" radio talk he recalled: "The great Chief Justice White said: 'There is great danger, it seems to me, to arise from the constant habit which prevails where anything is opposed or objected to of referring without rhyme or reason to the Constitution as a means of preventing its accomplishment, thus creating the general impression that the Constitution is but a barrier to progress instead of being the broad highway through which alone true progress may be enjoyed.' "

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