SUPREME COURT: Four-Way Stretch

This week the Supreme Court upheld the Taft-Hartley provision requiring non-Communist oaths from labor leaders—a clause that was once labor’s bitterest pill, and has since proved almost as easy to take as an aspirin. The justices had a hard time making up their collective mind: Chief Justice Vinson’s majority opinion was shared by Justices Burton and Reed; Justice Frankfurter was on their side, but for his own rendered reasons; Justice Black flatly dissented; and Justice Jackson was somewhere in the middle, partly agreeing, partly dissenting. Three others (Justices Douglas, Clark and Minton) stayed out of the argument altogether.