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To the editor of the "Crimson":

Saturday's clever Vagabond on the fireside chat of Henry II that led so unfortunately to the assassination of Thomas a Becket suggests an interpretation of the analogy to Roosevelt's court reforms that was perhaps not quite the one the Vagabond had in mind. I do not have enough of his facile subtlety to maintain the anonymity of his analogy, so I hope I will be excused if I have to treat mine more explicitly.

First, Henry's reforms were among the most important and beneficial in England's history. Second, Becket's opposition was based on a narrow class privilege, wholly at odds with progress and the general welfare. Third, there was considerable support of precedent for both sides in the conflict. The superior legality of one or the other was a matter of such tenuous interpretation that it might easily have merited a five-to-four decision in a modern Supreme Court. Impetuously, the twelfth century politicians sought to solve the conflict of reform and the existence of a strategically-placed individual by assassinating him.

But assassination, where it is a solution at all, is a medieval one. Mr. Roosevelt would not have his Beckets on the Supreme Court assassinated. Good humanitarian that he is, he only wants to separate the question of constitutional interpretation from the irrelevant question of Mr. Justice McReynold's good health. After all, it is only the twisted decisions of a few justices that have established this unnatural connection between the meaning of the Constitution and their continued existence. Unless Mr. Roosevelt can somehow circumvent the consequences of the social prepossessions of several justices, he is forced to wait unhappily for their deaths. Those who would admit a changed constitutional interpretation only when the objectionable judges die really argue for assassination. Sincerely,   R. I. Bishop '37