Word: meltsner
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...that he imparted to it. A man of stern humanitarian ideals, he loomed on the bench as a kind of Old Testament lawgiver, who approached issues with a disarming simplicity. "You'd see this paterfamilias insisting on the justice of the black man's cause," noted Michael Meltsner, a young lawyer for the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense Fund, who has argued before the Warren court. "Almost every question was directed toward justice, not technicalities...
Speaking were Howard formerly of the civil rights of the Justice Department; Meltsner, counsel for the Legal Defense Fund; and Zinn, professor of government at Boston University...
...Meltsner John Doer, head of the civil division of the Justice Department, who was kept in Washington because of the signing of the rights bill...
...Meltsner pointed out that "the law not only registers goals, but it sets them. Without law, the sit-ins would have been impossible," he said. He suggested that demonstrators should also think it terms of using existing legal channels to obtain their ends. "Getting laws may be a question of demonstrations, but getting them to work is more sophisticated...
...Every day they spend in jail is punishment without any kind of probable cause," Meltsner said. He said that if the students were out on ball, their lawyers would wait until the trial to attack the enforcement of the insurrection statute. Unusual measures are being taken because local officials show no dispensation to issue a writ of habeas corpus, or set reasonable bail for the prisoners, Meltsner said...