Word: contemptibly
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...volunteered a visitor who had just left him one day last week, was "damned unhappy about the vote last night." The vote: the Senate's 51-to-42 acceptance of an amendment that snarled up the civil rights bill by specifying jury trials in criminal contempt cases. Acute unhappiness overtoned the crisp and unprecedented statement that a grim-jawed Dwight Eisenhower dictated to his press secretary. "My first reaction ... is to extend my sincere appreciation to ... those Senators who stood ... in valiant and persistent efforts to bring to all our citizens protection in their right to vote-a protection...
...rights vote as surprising as it had been dramatic. Climaxing a legislative day that spanned 14 maneuver-packed hours, the Senate, in the minutes after a muggy Washington midnight, agreed to tack on to Part IV the disputed amendment guaranteeing trial by jury to any person charged with criminal contempt...
What Bill Knowland did not realize was the essential infirmity of his "sure" votes. A handful of moderates in both parties-enough to swing the scales-still had serious doubts over the complex legal problem of jury trials in contempt cases. Massachusetts' Democrat Jack Kennedy had asked four Harvard law professors whether the concept of jury trials in criminal contempt cases was sound or not, received an unhelpful 2-2 reply...
...Dwight Eisenhower would be virtually forced to veto it because the four-page, 650-word jury-trial amendment was so loosely drawn that it would devastate the whole legal mechanism for dealing with cases under such laws as antitrust, atomic energy and securities exchange by the accepted injunction and contempt-of-court procedures (see box). It would even force jury trials for contempt of the United States Court of Appeals, which has no jury mechanism...
...ever been understood that proceedings . . . for contempt of court have been subject to the right of trial by jury, we have been unable to find any instance...