THE JUDICIARY: Up a Notch

Of 19 new federal judges nominated last week by President Truman, two made headline news.

One was hard-working U.S. District Attorney John F. X. McGohey, whose selection as a judge of the Southern District of

New York came the day after he finished the job of prosecuting the eleven U.S. Communist leaders.

The other was William Henry Hastie, 44, wartime civilian aide to the Secretary of War, and since 1946 governor of the Virgin Islands. Lawyer Hastie became the first Negro on the federal bench when he was appointed U.S. district judge in the Virgin Islands in 1937. Last week he was named to the third circuit court of appeals (Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and the Virgin Islands), thus became the first Negro appointed to the second highest court in the federal system. Able Governor Hastie got his advancement in the same week that a college classmate got a sharp reverse: Manhattan Councilman Ben Davis, the other outstanding Negro member of the Amherst Class of 1925, was one of the eleven convicted Communist leaders.