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Supreme Court — Part 28

83 pages · May 11, 2026 · Broad topic: General · Topic: Supreme Court · 83 pages OCR'd
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incr Hamilton, e nsibility Placed by Constitution apon the ju- rie Co to imsure that the Sengreas does does not not anjeste an = Bt Ancien right te privacy nor _ abridge his liberty of speech, _ press, religion e¢ assembly” | On the very'‘same decision } day, the Court placed added jjemphasis on Firat: Amend- ment rights in the Sweezy ase. . TAKE ANOTHER situation in which the Vinson Court did \ nothing to check trespasses on civil iiberties—this time ‘Athe Executive Branch of the it Government. The Department of State had arrogated to it- self arbitrary authority to de- termine, in its own absolute discretion, who could go abroad. Secretary of State Dutles, and Secretary Ache- son before him, denied pass- | Ports whenever they conclud- | ed—often on the basis of un- : disclosed information from. . gnonymous sources—that it was not in the best interests , of the United States to allow CHIEF JUSTICE WARREN . ... emphasis on inddvidyal . freedom soe ane : gan American citizen to travel. ; his past spring, howevet, the Warren Court denounced this practice as inconsfnant with a clearly recognized con- stitutional right to travel and held that the Secretary: sot Siate could no longer. with { hold passports whenever he pleased. in the absence. of legislation fixing standar'Js for the issuance of passports. Another illustration may be found in regard to the rman tutionality of the Governmen loyalty-security program. “Tn! the Dorothy Bailey Case, braughi_pefore it iy LOS), . the Court divided follr 4a-four. Goreron mt hoy aly ae. | Goreramen oy P - “It ‘cannot be sai gt the, lvarren Court a the Warren Court held dismis- sals. under the program to be invalid and restored dis- missed employes to their positions, And in the Cole Case, it Limited application of the program to sensitive positions actually affecting | upon the constitution “of the ltoyalty-security pr ‘ Nevertheless, in the Case and in thé Service Cane, national security. / THERE is one additional area. in which the Warren Court has rendered distin- guished service as a cham pion of civil liberties. It has resolutely insisted upon po- lice observance of those pro- cedural protections of the Bill of Rights which laymen are too often disposed to dismiss as mere legal technicalities. 1 | (hiet ne af Hhaete 8 £00 sw Ltr SIVUEGT) HW Justice Frankfurter once ob- . served, “has largely been the | history of observance of pro- * cedura] safeguards. And the effective administration of . erimina) justice hardly re- quires disregard of fair proce- . dures inmposed by law.” In a number of cases, the Warren Court has upset con- victions because police or | prosecutors have taken short © pute whish tmepalyvsad trasnase. be said that these decisions made law enforcement more dificult. They served, how- ever, to keep police -power.. from becoming oppressive and to make the administra- . tion of justice in the United States consonant with an_at- mosphere of freedom. IT I8, of course, misleading to speak of the Warren Court or the Vinson Court as though these were distinct bodies gov- erned by the personalities of their Chief Justices. Three Justices—Black, Frankfurter, and Douglas — have served continuously throughout the decade, and the terms of _other Justices overlapped our ‘arbitary dividing line. And, in addition, new faces have appeared. Obviously, there was a com- plex Court was, as it always is, re- -ing on the rights of defend-— ants. To some extent, it may Lor Tr. interaction here. The © sponsive to the country as: well as responsible in some measure for the abatement of its fever. National security is of vital importance. But we need above all else to remember that the one true function of security is Se-mele individual freedom secure. malate ‘ attribute of fu manship to wait tian time has ripened the ness of society to accept new directions in the law. The panic atmosphere in which the Vinson Court functioned no longer prevailed with any- thing like the same intensity when the Warren Court made the poaet haetaninn dAantcinnes i Bl1cCaL liber WAL 1a UCL loin. And perhaps the real signifi- eance of the Warren Court's championship of individual liberty lies in the reflection of a rendscence among Amer- icans of confidence in their own institutions and of re- spect for the utility of free- dom> NOW IT IS all very well to take heart from the Warren ‘Court's championship of the Bill of Rights and to deduce from this championship that the country's high fever over sulversion has subsided. I do not think, however, that there is any justification for con- cluding that the Nation has completed its convalescence or that all goes well in the best of all possible cbuntries. Let me point out some considgrations_ in- : a
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