Non-Discussion in Alabama

Wondering what "our brethren" in Alabama have concluded about the expanding consequences of the Supreme Court's landmark decision against school segregation, Columbia University Law Professor Marvin Frankel read straight through the 1954-64 issues of The Alabama Lawyer, official publication of the Alabama Bar Association.

He found nothing but unmitigated blasts at the Court's "communistic, atheistic, nihilistic destruction of the Constitution." Not only was he unable to discover a single dissenting opinion, but The Alabama Lawyer's authors never once attempted to spell out the other side of the argument--even though, as Frankel noted, "the lawyer who cannot see his opponent's side or , the difficulties in his own case gropes in a blindness that is often fatal."

An Answer Was in Order. Frankel first submitted his tactful, carefully documented report to The Alabama Lawyer itself. Flatly rejected, it was published by the Columbia Law Review, but then came a remarkable reaction from the Birmingham (Ala.) News.

That segregationist member of the Newhouse newspaper chain ran a fair and reasoned summary of his critique, then carried the discussion onto the editorial page. "Mr. Frankel is astounded," said the News, "that the Alabama lawyers' periodical over ten years presents only one side of, let us say, the issue of desegregation vis-a-vis the Supreme Court. He has searched, he says, in vain for publication evidence that Alabama attorneys do other than roundly condemn the high court. Is there only one lawyers' viewpoint here in Alabama as regards the court and this general issue?"

The News thought that an answer was in order: "We invite attorneys from both pro-Frankel and anti-Frankel groups, if indeed there are two as we suspect there are, to utilize our columns for discussion."

Hooray for You. Even before the invitation from the News, however, Ala bama lawyers had begun responding to the article -- in personal letters to Professor Frankel. Most of the letters were attacks on Northern prejudice. But along with the poison-pen mail came letters from five Alabama lawyers who had been provoked into re-examining their own obligations as members of the bar. "Hooray for your excellent anal ysis," said an attorney in Montgomery.

"Yes, we are all guilty for standing by and letting one side show. Congratulations again on doing 'our' job."

That was not much, perhaps, to weigh against the majority opinion. But Columbia's Frankel did far better than the Birmingham News. In the three weeks since the paper invited the state's lawyers to sound off, the News has not received a single letter -- either for the prosecution or the defense.

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