Word: heflinism
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...first judicial conference, and new Chief Justice Howell T. Heflin was sharply taken aback. "Let's get around the Supreme Court on this one if we can," a senior justice had just announced. That was five years ago. Alabama's high court, like those of other Southern states, was still trying to thwart the Supreme Court of the United States-even after a decade and a half of reversals by federal judges. But shortly after the new chiefs swearing-in a secretary at the marmoreal Montgomery supreme court building shrewdly guessed that "things are going to be different...
Briar Patch. Different and then some. Armed with a passionate belief in "business-type supervision of the business operations of courts" and a native sense of how to push without shoving, Heflin has transformed Alabama's antique judiciary into one of the most modern and efficient in the U.S. He no sooner had his Dictaphone than he began sweet-talking the legislature and the electorate into reforming the state's briar patch of conflicting court jurisdictions and ludicrous rules. It was a five-year campaign, but he won it. Next January Alabama will get a single statewide court...
...appeals cases that had languished for as long as five years. Result: the backlog is gone. Since 1973 the appellate docket has been "current," a rarity for state courts. By mixing public praise for jurists who cut their trial backlog with private tongue-lashings for those who did not, Heflin achieved a 16% drop in criminal trial delays in the face of a 48% jump in cases filed. Civil trials were similarly speeded...
...Heflin, 55, is a strapping giant of a man, but he conspicuously avoids throwing his weight around. His background might well have produced a dyed-in-the-cot-ton supporter of the status quo instead of a reformer. Heflins have been in the state for six generations; the judge's late uncle, Cotton Tom Heflin, a populist turned black-baiting U.S. Senator (1920-31), was drummed out of the Democratic Party in 1928 for attacking Presidential Nominee Al Smith as "the Roman candidate." Young Howell went to Birmingham Southern College, served as a Marine officer in World...
...great many stage and film actors used to stimulate that faculty, among them Jeff Chandler, Van Heflin, Richard Widmark, Agnes Moorehead and E.G. Marshall. To many performers, ra dio drama remains more than a warm memory. Moorehead and Marshall, for example, are returning to CBS Radio Mystery Theater at far less than their customary salaries. "There is a place for the spoken word in our lives," Marshall insists. "Just think of how much fun it will be to turn off the lights at home, rest your eyes and get involved, using your mind instead of just sharing...