Word: burger
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...high court's majority opinion was hedged by the concurring opinions o Chief Justice Warren Burger and Justice Lewis Powell. In Burger's view, the decision applies only to pretrial hearings not to trials themselves. That is not a great limitation, however, since about 90% of all criminal cases are disposed of before they ever reach trial. It is during pretrial hearings that abuses by police and prosecutors are most likely to come out. Powell, arguing that the public ought to know what goes on in the courts, wanted explicitly to grant reporters a First Amendment "interest...
Gannett vs. DePasquale could be the biggest setback the press has yet suffered at the hands of the Burger Court but it is hardly the first. Other defeats...
...Burger Court's record is not entirely adverse to the press. The court has repeatedly ruled that the First Amendment protects the press from "prior restraint,"-that is, from laws or court rulings that prevent the press from publishing what it knows. Thus the court allowed the press to publish the Pentagon papers in 1971, despite claims by the Government of national security; unanimously (7-0) struck down a Virginia statute last year that penalized newspapers for revealing secret disciplinary proceedings against a judge; and forbade courts in 1976 to "gag" the press to keep it from printing information...
Chief Justice Warren Burger and Justice William Rehnquist dissented forcefully. (For varying reasons, Lewis Powell and John Paul Stevens did not participate in the decision.) In a biting opinion, Rehnquist argued that the legislative history of Title VII shows that "Congress meant precisely what it said." Congressional proponents of the act argued "tirelessly" during 83 days of debate that Title VII would be used neither to require nor permit quotas. Burger said that he would side with the majority if he were a Congressman, but that as a judge he had no business joining in "totally rewriting a crucial part...
...footnote in the Hutchinson decision also cautioned judges against automatically throwing out libel cases brought by clear-cut public figures. The defendant's state of mind-the key element in actual malice-"does not readily lend itself to summary disposition," wrote Chief Justice Warren Burger. Just two months ago, the high court ruled in Herbert vs. Lando that libel plaintiffs can probe a reporter's state of mind. This may raise questions of fact that only a jury, not a judge, can decide...