Word: laws
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Secret Life. To most people, including the President no doubt, Fortas is a puzzling, enigmatic, even mysterious man. "I wouldn't be surprised," says one of his former law clerks, "if tomorrow I were to find out that Abe Fortas leads a secret life as a published poet in South America." Questioning counsel from the bench, he can be determined, abrupt, relentless in his search for the heart of a case. He can tear a poorly reasoned argument to tatters...
Aside from the law, Fortas' lifelong interest has been music. His Sunday afternoon music group is famous as the "3025 N Street Strictly-No-Refunds String Quartet." Any visiting violinist or cellist who passes through Washington is likely to be pressed into service. The Justice numbers Rudolf Serkin, Isaac Stern and Pablo Casals among his friends, and has helped to arrange the annual Casals Festival in Puerto Rico. In a jest that his enemies might not recognize, he has sometimes introduced himself at White House functions as "Abe Fortas?I am a violinist." His Italian Guidantus violin...
...precise analyst, is likely to improve their quality. One justified criticism of the Warren court is that the decisions, though progressive and humane, were often so poorly written and negligent of precedent that they were confusing to lawyers and judges in lower courts, who must look on them as law...
...recent pamphlet, Concerning Dissent and Civil Disobedience, Fortas spoke forcefully of the need for order?and the right of dissent. The law, he believes, must be a living thing, responsive to social reality and human needs...
...Court, Fortas mused, are, in some respects, "nine emperors." A Chief Justice can neither coerce nor cajole his associates; he can do little more than recommend what actions they should take. They are the "mix in the carburetor"-a good court needs Justices from different backgrounds. In applying the law, in his view, the Justices should not be as concerned as they sometimes have been in "squeezing" judicial decisions into a neat pattern. They should instead make full use of all the modern tools; not only law, but medicine, psychiatry, mass psychology, economics and social engineering. Fortas himself is thinking...