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...