nstitutional invasion of private rights. Shortly after the first
world war, it sustained, by a narrow margin, a rent control law for the
District of Columbia, which not merely limited the rents which might be
charged but which also gave the existing tenants the right to continue
in occupancy of their dwellings at their own option, provided they paid
rent and performed other stipulated conditions. The Court, while
conceding that ordinarily such legislation would transcend
constitutional limitations, declared that "a public exigency will
justify the legislature in restricting property rights in land to a
certain extent without compensation. * * * A limit in time, to tide over
a passing trouble, well may justify a law that could not be upheld as a
permanent change."[1304] During World War II an apartment house owner
who complained that the rentals allowed by the Office of Price
Administration did not afford a "fair return" on the property was told
by the Court that, "a nation which can demand the lives of its men and
women in the waging of * * * war is under no constitutional necessity of
providing a system of price control * * * which will assure each
landlord a 'fair return' on his property."[1305] Moreover, such rentals
may be established without a prior hearing because "national security
might not be able to afford the luxuries of litigation and the long
delays which preliminary hearings traditionally have entailed. * * *
Where Congress has provided for judicial review after the regulations or
orders have been made effective it has done all that due process under
the war emergency requires."[1306] The more specific clauses of the Bill
of Rights yield less readily, however, to the impact of a war emergency.
In United States _v._ Cohen Grocery Company,[1307] the Court held that a
statute which penalized the making of "'any unjust or unreasonable rate
or charge in handling * * * any necessaries,'" was void on the ground
that it set up no "ascertainable standard of guilt" and so was
"repugnant to the Fifth and Sixth Amendments * * * which require due
process of law and that persons accused of crime shall be adequately
informed of the nature and cause of the accusation."[1308]

PERSONAL LIBERTY IN WARTIME

That the power of Congress to punish seditious utterances in time of war
is limited by the First Amendment was assumed by the Supreme Court in
the series of cases[1309] in which it affirmed convictions for violation
of