Word: legalism
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Last week, 17 hours before the inquest In Re: Mary Jo Kopechne was to begin on Martha's Vineyard, the state's highest court intervened, delaying the proceeding for at least several weeks and temporarily awarding Edward M. Kennedy a legal victory. Justice Paul Reardon ordered a postponement until the full seven-member supreme court, now in recess, could hear arguments on whether an inquest governed by Judge Boyle's ground rules would be a violation of Kennedy's constitutional rights...
Thus, for the first time since his black Oldsmobile tumbled off the Dike Bridge on Chappaquiddick seven weeks ago, Kennedy gained a measure of legal control over the case that, in the midst of his own silences and the elaborate speculations of practically everyone else, had been careering toward what he feared would be, in effect, an officially sanctioned trial by rumor...
...accident? Under Boyle's strictures, Kennedy's attorneys would not have been permitted to produce expert testimony to challenge Farrar's thesis or his qualifications. Meantime, every news story from Edgartown would recirculate the Farrar version, enveloped this time in the dignifying aura of a legal proceeding...
...Some legal experts believe the most likely outcome is that the inquest will be canceled-leaving Dinis the option of calling a grand jury-or that it will be held in secret to protect the rights of Kennedy and the other witnesses. In either case, the public, which is presumably a court to which every politician must appeal, would be denied an open and formal explanation. Kennedy might have gone ahead with the Edgartown inquest, risking rumors on the record in order to account for his conduct clearly once and for all. Now he has for a time formalized...
...most efficient way to gather the evidence of it. The public has a legitimate interest in knowing whether or not Kennedy misrepresented the facts of the accident, but a U.S. Senator, like any other citizen, has a right to be protected from prejudicial publicity that may affect some future legal matter. Unless Judge Boyle keeps the testimony within bounds, the inquest could turn into a circus that would be unfair to Kennedy and the other witnesses as well...