Controversy Refueled

Seldom in so short a span do newspapers have to grapple with such complex legal issues as those in the Page One headlines last week. They ranged from the indictment of Russia's rape of an entire nation to the fine points of Supreme Court concern for the rights of individuals. Abstruse and remote though most of them might be in their philosophical underpinnings, these topics aroused Americans because they converged on the central theme of freedom and justice under law--whether in Japan or Germany, whether for Hungarians or Americans.

By far the biggest issue for the press was posed last week by the Supreme Court's civil rights decisions (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS). Refueling one of the most perplexing controversies of the decade--individual liberty v. national security--the court's decisions moved the New York Daily News to suggest congressional impeachment of "one or more of the learned justices," prompted a jubilant Page One editorial in the Daily Worker, headed "A Milestone for Democracy," and blew up an eight-column editorial-page headline in the Hearst press: COMMUNISTS SCORE "GREATEST VICTORY."

Concern for Leftists. The court virtually invited journalistic fulminations with its Watkins-case decision, curbing the investigatory powers of Congress, and its Smith Act ruling that it is not illegal to advocate overthrow of the U.S. Government as "an abstract principle divorced from any effort to instigate action to that end." Some of the loudest outcries came from newspapers that had championed McCarthy; they ranged from the Omaha World-Herald's gibe that it is now "all right to teach that the White House should be blown up," to the Cleveland Plain Dealer's invitation: "Well, comrades, you've got what you wanted. The Supreme Court has handed it to you on a platter. Come and get us."

The equally conservative Cleveland News, though owned by the Plain Dealer's publishers, applauded the court's decisions as upholding "the individual rights on which the American system is based." The Southern press, already convinced by the desegregation decision that the Supreme Court is heeding social and political expediency rather than legal precedent, spoke almost solidly against the latest decision, abounding in comments that amounted to: "We told you so."

Though there were exceptions, that basic piece of political philosophy, the Bill of Rights, was treated with the respectful debate it deserves. Even the Chicago Tribune's column-long editorial, though characteristically petulant, actually seemed restrained for a subject so close to the Tribune's prejudices. Many newspapers, such as the Washington Star, as well as Right-Wing Columnist David Lawrence (TIME, June 3), argued that the Watkins decision has "crippled" congressional investigators; several editors quarreled with the court's semantics in the Smith Act decision.

Liberty & Perplexity. But the critical reaction ran less to ire than to doubt over the decisions' practical results, and earnest inquiry into the legal logic behind them. The Montgomery Advertiser, for example, devoted a column and a half to a plaintive tracing of five "major shifts in court doctrine in the past 30 or 40 years." Said the 18-paper Scripps-Howard chain: "At the very least, we have a crisis in our traditional methods of administering justice. Whether the court has, in these instances, gone too far in hampering honest law enforcement is a matter of opinion that must be reserved."

It was a reassuring sign that divergent views occasionally appeared in the same newspapers. After Pundit Lawrence had urged in the New York Herald Tribune the "election of the high court justices by the people," so that the court could be "held accountable for its acts," Tribune Columnist Roscoe Drummond decried as "erroneous" Lawrence's argument that the Supreme Court is undermining Congress.

The New York Times's Chief Washington Correspondent James Reston reported in a Page One story that the court is "proclaiming 'liberty throughout all the land' in no ambiguous terms"; but the Times's Pundit Arthur Krock noted that the court had caused widespread "perplexity" and might yet silence criticism with "common sense" interpretations of its decisions, but predicted that "none can be anticipated with any confidence."

Gentle Brake. One of the most eloquent supporters of the court was the Christian Science Monitor, which dismissed "hasty misconceptions that the court is being soft on Communists," and argued: "Its opinions are basically and soundly conservative. For they mark an emphatic return to constitutional guarantees of liberty." Concurring in this generally approving view was a topflight group that included the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Baltimore Sun, Washington Post and Times Herald, Hartford Courant, Providence Journal, Milwaukee Journal, Des Moines Register, New York Times.

John S. Knight's powerful newspapers, among the nation's most zealous in their attacks on foreign aid and the budget (TIME, May 20), viewed the decisions with mixed feelings. But at least one Knight paper, the Detroit Free Press, applauded the court for applying "gentle brakes to those who, in their zeal, might be inclined to push restrictive measures too far." Conclusion: "We doubt that the Supreme Court has let the bars down. Rather, we interpret the decisions as a gentle warning not to get excited when there is, at least momentarily, no cause for excitement." Newspapers that had blown up the case of Soldier William Girard in behalf of the idea of individual freedom, and had blown up at the Supreme Court decisions springing from the same concern, still had a chance to compose themselves: the Supreme Court will shortly rule in re Girard.

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