The United States Supreme Court: 1950-1951

Abstract

THERE ARE MANY FANCIFUL WAYS of suggesting the accomplishment of the impossible, as making bricks without straw, or putting on Hamlet without the melancholy Dane, or making an omelet without any eggs. The trouble with those phrases is their familiarity; they have become cliches. And so anyone interested in the expansion of the English language may note with pleasure that at the October 1950 term of the Supreme Court, that body gave us another handy phrase to add to this growing lexicon. It had a Civil Liberties term of Court-without any Liberty. Hyperbole? Perhaps there was one egg in that omelet, a little straw for the bricks. The Prince may at least have been the off-stage noises in the legendary performance. So with Liberty at mid-Century: she was only an off-stage rumble, not a character dominating the scene.