(The Crimson invites all men in the University to submit signed communications of timely interest. It assumes no responsibility, however, for sentiments expressed under this head and reserves the right to exclude any whose publication would be palpably inappropriate.)

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Mr. Leach's communication, printed in a recent issue of the CRIMSON, entirely misrepresents the decision of the Supreme Court in the Steel Corporation case, and cannot be allowed to go unanswered. "This court", says Mr. Leach, "has reasoned substantially as follows: the purpose of law is the furtherance of the public welfare; when, therefore, a statute which usually accomplishes this end fails to react to the benefit of the public in a particular case, the fundamental purpose of the law should be considered above its mere verbal provisions. In other words, the public weal supersedes all law." The Supreme Court reasoned in no such way. If it had, it would have said in effect, that this is a government of men and not of laws. For in every case, the opinion of the judge as to what "the public weal" was would be supreme and controlling over the expressed will of the legislature.

The courts have no right to overrule legislation; and they claim no such right. Their task is to apply legislation to the facts; and if in any case a statute appears capable of more than one interpretation, to construe it as they think the legislature meant it to be construed, subject to general principles of construction. Mr. Leach forgets that the public weal is a thing, concerning which there can be no knowledge, but only opinion; and that our government is based on the idea that we should rely on the opinion of our representative legislatures and not of the courts.

There is not space to quote at length from the majority opinion. One quotation will have to suffice: "We do not," say the majority, "mean to say that the law is not its own measure, and that it can be disregarded, but only that the appropriate relief in each instance is remitted to a court of equity to determine, not, and let us be explicit in this, to advance a policy contrary to that of the law, but in submission to the law and its policy and in execution of both."

Mr. Leach's conclusions from his own reasoning are enough to show his error. He admits that the Constitution guarantees freedom of speech and of the press. But he says, in the case of Bolshevists "we (and I suppose that here he means to constitute himself the judge of what the public thinks) have been forced to realize that these principles (i.e., freedom of speech and the press) have reacted to the detriment of the public welfare which they were purposed to benefit." The obvious moral is that in the case of Bolshevists the public weal (or Mr. Leach's interpretation of it) should supersede the law. But suppose the public-or some court-should get the idea that Mr. Leach's speeches and letters were detrimental to the public welfare. What then, Mr. Leach? ROBERT M. BENJAMIN 1L.