Word: griswold
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...does the Supreme Court go on reversing state criminal decisions? Is it really soft on criminals? Is it unlawfully amending the Constitution? Harvard's Law School Dean Erwin N. Griswold told the Cleveland Bar Association last week that if anything, the court has been remarkably restrained in exercising its "clear responsibility" to make states follow the national standard set by the 14th Amendment under which "no state . . . shall deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process...
...These words are not merely empty vessels," said Griswold. They go back 750 years to Magna Carta; yet the states so ignored them that in 1905 the highly conservative William Howard Taft, who later became Chief Justice, called U.S. state criminal justice "a disgrace to our civilization." As recently as 1923, the Supreme Court confronted the fact that Arkansas' highest court had upheld death sentences meted out in a trial "dominated by mob violence" (Moore v. Dempsey). Was the Supreme Court wrong in reversing that decision? What about confessions "obtained by brutality or by fraud?" asked the dean. Since...
Sound & Salutary. For 172 years, noted Griswold, most state police acted as if they never heard of the Fourth Amendment ban against "unreasonable searches and seizures." Most of them never even used search warrants. In 1949, the court tolerantly ruled (Wolf v. Colorado) that states could enforce the Fourth Amendment as they saw fit. For example, they did not necessarily have to exclude illegally seized evidence (despite the rule to that effect in federal courts since 1914). Yet the states so abused even Wolf that in 1961 the court finally applied the "exclusionary rule" to all states (Mapp v. Ohio...
Taking the Cue. As Registrar Hood appeared last week, Harvard Law School Dean Erwin Griswold, a member of the commission, leaned toward him and said: "I hand you a copy of Section 182 of the Mississippi state constitution. For the benefit of the commission, would you give us a reasonable interpretation of it?" Hood read silently, then said, "Well, it means that the power to tax corporations and their property . . ." Interrupted Griswold: "I didn't ask you to read it-I asked you to interpret...
...Erwin N. Griswold, Dean of the Faculty of Law, will conduct the service. Speakers will include Paul A. Freund, Carl M. Loeb University Professor, Austin W. Scott '37, Dane Professor of Law emeritus, and John H. Mansfield '51, professor...