Word: brennans
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...court in finding Tate's imprisonment a violation of his right to equal protection of the laws, sharply limited the traditional power of American judges to sentence poor defendants to "$30 or 30 days." The Constitution, said Justice William Brennan, forbids states to "limit the punishment to payment of the fine if one is able to pay, yet convert the fine into a prison term for an indigent defendant." In taking away the jail alternative, Brennan suggested various other means in which courts might deal with the poor, including the collection of fines on an installment plan...
...unwarned suspect later takes the stand, his pretrial statements to the police can be used to impeach his courtroom testimony. In sharp dissent, Justice William J. Brennan argued that the effect of the decision is that police may now "freely interrogate an accused incommunicado" despite Miranda; the accused may then see his own careless words convict him "if he has the temerity to testify in his own defense." Brennan's argument failed to move Burger, who dismissed "the speculative possibility that impermissible police conduct will be encouraged...
...protects phone conversations from unreasonable search and seizure-just as it protects someone's home. Presumably, the Fourth Amendment protects all phone conversations equally, but when one Supreme Court Justice-Byron White-stated that the Court should not require a warrant in national security cases, only Justices Douglas and Brennan wrote arguments opposing him. Two years later-when the Justice Department was caught using evidence against Muhammed Ali that it had obtained inadvertently through its standard, if crude, practice of wiretapping foreign embassies-the Court refused to decide whether the government had acted illegally or not, saying it had never...
...protested ROTC, favored the Cuban Revolution and demonstrated against the House Un-American Activities Committee. For his efforts, Tigar was investigated by the California legislature's HUAC equivalent. California conservatives and their congressional allies were so disturbed by his activities that they pressured Supreme Court Justice William Brennan Jr. to withdraw his offer of a clerkship for Tigar, who had graduated at the top of his law-school class. Brennan reluctantly went along...
...majority consisted of Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, Associate Justices Hugo L. Black, William J. Brennan Jr., Byron R. White, Thur-good Marshall and Harry A. Blackmun. Justices Potter Stewart and John M. Harlan dissented on different grounds...