Bledsoe v. Coxe Lumber Co.

This appeal calls to mind the ancient admonition that hard cases form the quicksands of the law.

Congress adopted the Emergency Price Control Act of 1942 as a temporary wartime measure “to stabilize prices and to prevent speculative, unwarranted and abnormal increases in prices and rents” because the stabilization of the national economy was “in the interest of the national defense and security and necessary to the effective prosecution of the . . . war.” Emergency Price Control Act of 1942, sec. 1 (a); 50 U. S. C. A., Appendix, 901 (a); Yakus v. United States, 321 U. S., 414, 64 S. Ct., 660,…