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“at. INITED STATES No. 606.—Ocroprr Term, 1969 . aes On Writ of Certiorari to abit +] . State of Illinois, Petitioner the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. en William Allen. [March 31, 1970] Mr, Justice BRENNAN, concurring. The safeguards that the Constitution accords to erim- jnal defendants presuppose that government has a sov- ereign prerogative to put on trial those accused in good faith of violating valid laws. Constitutional power to bring an accused to trial is fundamental to a scheme of “ordered liberty” and prerequisite to social justice and peace, History has known the breakdown of lawful penal authority—the feud. the vendetta, and the terror of penalties meted out by mobs or roving bands of vigi- Yantes. It has known, too. the perversion of that au- thority. In some societies the penal’ arm of the state has reached individual men through seeret denunciation followed by summary punishinent. Jn others the solemn power of condemnation has been confided to the caprice of tyrants. Down the corridors of history have echoed the cries of innocent men convicted by other irrational or arlitrary procedures. These are some of the alterna- tives history offers to the procedure adopted by our Constitution, The right of a defendant to trial—to trial by jury—has long been cherished by our people as a vital restraint on the penal authority of govern- ment. And it has never been doubted that under our constitutional traditions trial in accordance with the Constitution is the proper mode by which government exercises that authority. ‘8