The Overworked Court
Will the Democrats Survive Miami?
A commission on party structure and delegate selection and a commission on rules were set up by the 1968 Democratic national convention in the hope of avoiding a repetition of itself; and everyone immediately began to fear that the two commissions, particularly the first, would help bring about exactly what they were meant to forestall, and more of it even than in 1968. New requirements would be imposed on the process of delegate selection, the state parties would not yield to them, and the 1972 convention would be a shambles of credentials contests and little else. READ MORE >>
Death Penalty Litigation
Skelly Wright's Sweeping Decision
In a long, passionate opinion in the case of Hobson v. Hansen, Judge J. Skelly Wright of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, sitting by assignment as a District Judge, has roundly indicted the Washington school system and its superintendent, Dr. Carl F. Hansen, declaring the former, and quite possibly also the latter, unconstitutional. The opinion is a jeremiad and as such commands respect. The inner city of Washington, with its slums, its poverty, its juvenile crime and its schools, is a disgrace. Against this, Judge Wright cries out, from the heart. READ MORE >>
Criminalizing Homosexuality
On January 8,1962, a state grand jury in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, handed down an indictment charging two men—call them Defendants A and B—with having committed a homosexual act, more specifically, fellatio. Defendant A pleaded no contest, received a five-year sentence and served a portion of it. Defendant B pleaded not guilty, was tried by a jury, and was sentenced to serve not less than 20 or more than 30 years in jail. The sentences were handed down by the same judge. READ MORE >>
