gant Federal bureaucracy.

gant Federal bureaucracy.

One of the curious aspects of the new philosophy of Constitutional law is the idea of “pre-emption.” In simplest terms, this means that the Court has held that, when the Congress passes a law, a State law on the same subject becomes invalid, because the Federal Government has “occupied the ground .” This is quite a differant thing, of course, from the old principle that, in case of a direct conflict between provisions of a State law and a Federal law, the language of the latter should prevail.

More than a year-and-a-half ago, Rep. Howard W. Smith of Virginia introduced a bill to straighten the court out on this. Judge Smith proposed to state that except in case of a direct conflict, or in case of a specific statuory instruction by'the Congress, no State law would become invalid merely because a Federal law on the same subject had been passed.

Despite its great importance as a check on the drift to complete federalizzation of our American law and the aboragation of all State and local statutes and ordinances, Judge Smith was unable to get committee action on his bill until the Supreme Court threw out a Pennsylvania sedition law on the ground that the Federal Government had taken charge of all sedition matters by the Smith Act. This produced some limited allegiance to the principles of States rights among certain Northern legislators, and Judge Smith’s bill came out of committee to the floor of the House. (Action was scheduled for this week) The committee proposed, however, that the bill be rewritten to apply only to the sedition matter, and not operate to curb other Supreme Court excursions into legislating.

It is a sad commentary on the degeneration of the concept of separation of powers in our Government that it should become necessary to call the Nation’s high