THE JUDICIARY: Quick, Harry, the Sheriff!

Harry Truman asked for advice and got it. He had just about made up his mind to raise one of the eight surviving members of the Supreme Court into the Chief Justiceship, vacant since the death of Harlan Fiske Stone (TIME, April 29). Then he conferred with former Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes and former Justice Owen Roberts.

Whatever it was they told him, it shook him. There were eight good reasons why none of the eight august survivors would altogether do.

The Court was beset by conflicts, personal and philosophic. The situation was not unprecedented, but Supreme Court Justices have generally done their feuding on a plane too high for ordinary observation. On the present Court the feuding was in plain view.

Jackson and Murphy are enemies. Jackson, once upon a time, wanted to be Attorney General. Murphy got the job. Jackson set his sights on the Supreme Court. Murphy beat him to it. When Jackson finally landed on the Court, they were like two tomcats tossed into the same barrel. Hugo Black is another Jackson-hater. Friends predicted that he would resign if Jackson were appointed Chief Justice.

Black, who votes to the left of center, feuds with Felix Frankfurter, who has surprised all his old New Deal friends by voting way to the right—where he usually has the company of Harold Burton. Appointment of William Douglas would give too much weight to the left (Douglas, Black, Murphy and Wiley Rutledge). Justice Reed, the nearest thing to a center of gravity, lacks the strong disciplinary hand needed to bring all this dissonance into harmony.

Harry Truman offered the Chief Justiceship to Charles Evans Hughes, but Mr. Hughes, in good health but 84, declined with thanks. The search for a Chief Justice went on.