University of Virginia Library

Supreme Court Opens

Reprinted from the Richmond Times Dispatch.

The United States Supreme Court, Earl
Warren presiding, yesterday began what could
develop into one of the most bitter and
controversial years in the tribunal's 179-year
history.

It could also be an historic term in which
the court, sensing public opinion, turns at
least slightly to the right after a decade and a
half of ultra liberal activism. But no cautious
citizen will bet that this will happen.

As Chief Justice Warren led his eight
black-robed colleagues into the packed
courtroom 20 minutes late yesterday
afternoon, the eyes of most of the spectators
focused on Warren and Associate Justice Abe
Fortas.

It was Warren's conditional retirement,
submitted to Lyndon Johnson in the early
summer, that led the President to nominate
Fortas to become Chief Justice. In a stinging
rebuke to both Fortas and the man who
nominated him, the Senate refused to halt a
filibuster against the nomination, which was
then withdrawn. Also falling by the wayside
was the President's nomination of federal
Circuit Judge Homer Thomberry of Texas to
fill the vacancy which never developed.

So the same nine Justices who hung up
their robes and scattered to far places last
June are sitting again, handling scores of cases
which reflect the agony and anger of a large
part of America today.

The court launched its 1968-69 term with
a hearing on George Wallace's attempt to get
on the ballot in Ohio. Wallace, who describes
the high tribunal as a "sorry outfit" which
lacks the sense to try a chicken thief,
contends that the Ohio law governing who can
get on the presidential ballot is so restrictive
as to be unconstitutional.

In another presidential ballot case, the
court yesterday turned down the Virginia
Conservative party's petition that state
authorities be required to print that party's
slate (Wallace and California Gov. Ronald
Reagan) on the Virginia ballot. This was a
victory for Wallace and his American
Independent party. They didn't want the
Alabamian's Virginia vote split between two
separate tickets.

The turmoil pervading modern American
life is mirrored in a dozen or more cases
growing out of demonstrations and protests
pegged to civil rights or the war in Vietnam
and awaiting court action.

Cassius Clay is appealing his draft evasion
conviction. A divinity student from Wyoming
is challenging the reclassification of youths
who burn their draft cards. Three Iowa
teenagers are appealing their suspension from
public school for wearing black arm bands to
protest the war. Dick Gregory and the Rev.
Fred L. Shuttlesworth, Negro civil rights
activists, contend that their arrests in
demonstrations were illegal.

The undercurrent of unrest is seen in other
cases involving the constitutionality of
one-year state residence requirements for
welfare recipients, the right of a public school
to bar boys who refuse to get haircuts, the
power of the federal government to require
registration of marijuana transactions, the
right of tenants in federally aided housing
projects to a hearing on an eviction order.
And in an echo from the famous Tennessee
"monkey trial" of 1925, the court will
grapple with the legality of Arkansas' law
forbidding the teaching of evolution in the
schools.

Conceivably, the nine men (average age
65) who began the Supreme Court's 1968-69
term yesterday will not all be sitting on the
final day next June. The Chief Justice, for
example, could decide to retire outright, but
if he does it prior to the inauguration of the
next president, Mr. Johnson doubtless would
run into a Pandora's box of trouble if he tried
to fill a vacancy.

The words of Justice Oliver Wendell
Holmes concerning the court are truer today
than they were when uttered in 1913: "We
are very quiet here, but it is the quiet of a
storm center."