THE SUPREME COURT: The Demands of Trivia

Scolded in recent months by critics ranging from Southern Congressmen to the American Bar Association, the U.S. Supreme Court last week was scolded by one of its own members: peppery Associate Justice Felix Frankfurter. The occasion: a 6-2 Supreme Court decision to the effect that a North Dakota farmer may have died by accident rather than suicide, and that his widow could therefore collect on a double-indemnity insurance clause.

To Felix Frankfurter the case was trivial, and the court should not have wasted its time on it. Said Frankfurter, dissenting from the majority: "This is a case that should never...

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