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George Sutherland, 65, born in Buckinghamshire, England, and put on the high bench by President Harding. He spent his boyhood and young-lawyer's life in Utah, until sent to Congress. He is sometimes confused with a Scotch-Canadian namesake who, a good Baptist minister and college president, campaigns for the Anti-Saloon League in Nebraska. But not often, for he takes care to give "c/o Supreme Court of the U. S." as his address, in Who's Who, and wears a short beard of silver-tipped distinction. He is usually to be found on the vested-rights side of economic questions, for which Labor loves him little.
Pierce Butler, 61, of Minnesota, was appointed a few weeks after Mr. Associate Justice Sutherland. It was his first public office in 25 years, save for commissionerships.
Edward Terry Sanford, 62, the third Harding appointee, was once president of the Harvard Alumi Association. A Tennesseean with affiliations ranging from Phi Beta Kappa to Kiwanis, he ranges back & forth between liberalism and conservatism with the open mind of one who sat on district benches for 15 years.
Harlan Fiske Stone, latest addition (1925) to the Supreme Court, is its youngest, biggest, strapping-strongest member. He is but 55, He was graduated by Amherst College the year before Calvin Coolidge, in 1894. For 14 years (1910-24) he was Columbia University's Dean of Law and spent eleven months, between quitting that post and taking his present one, at being U. S. Attorney General. There was a flurry before Mr. Associate Justice Stone's confirmation by the Senate over the fact that he once represented J. P. Morgan & Co., and a storm over the fact that he was then trying to prosecute—some said, to persecute—Senator Burton K. Wheeler of Montana. But he was confirmed 71 to 6 and has become a sort of anchor man near the Court's level centre, like Chief Justice Taft in position if not in texture.
Outstanding Cases on the 1927 Supreme Court docket are:
Sinclair Oil v. the U. S. (the last civil suit of the oil scandals, about the validity of the Teapot Dome lease).
Liberty Warehouse Co. v. Burley Tobacco Growers' co-operative Marketing Association. (The question: are the U. S. laws constitutional* which authorize co-operative marketing of agricultural produce?)
New Mexico v. Texas (Boundary dispute).
Wisconsin v. Illinois (Diversion of Great Lakes water).
Swift & Co. v. the U. S. (Asking to be freed from an agreement to confine activities to meat packing).
* A word which, when used by Mr. Chief Justice Taft, acquires the timbre of archangelic trumpeting. "Con-sti-tooo-tional," says Mr. Chief Justice Taft.