Word: potter
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...trial. Since Burger's vote to allow judges to close off pretrial hearings was decisive in making up the court's five-man majority, his opinion should limit the scope of the decision. The confusion arises from some broad language in the majority opinion, written by Justice Potter Stewart and signed by four other Justices, including Burger. It flatly states that members of the public have no constitutional right to attend criminal trials. Technically that language is dicta-comments that are not binding precedent. But after a time, the precise limits on a high court decision have...
Writing for the high court's majority, Justice Potter Stewart acknowledged that there is a "strong societal interest" in open trials. But he left for another day the question whether judges must weigh that interest against the defendant's right to a fair trial. The Sixth Amendment's public-trial guarantee belongs only to the criminally accused, wrote Stewart, not to the public itself. He specifically refused to concede that the press or the public possesses a constitutional right, under the First Amendment, to attend criminal trials. Even if such a right of "access" did exist, Stewart...
...court's uncertain course depends largely on how five moderate Justices-Potter Stewart, John Paul Stevens, Byron White, Blackmun and Powell -cast their votes. They are known as the "fluid five" or the "floating center." Explains University of Chicago Law Professor Geoffrey Stone: "The Justices in the middle are not 'principle' Justices, which is not to say they are unprincipled -just unpredictable." The only real ideologues on the high bench are Rehnquist on the right and William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall on the left. Brennan, often a dissenter in the past, found himself in the majority...
...last week the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 7 to 2 against Feeney and for absolute hiring preferences for veterans. The Massachusetts law works to "the overwhelming advantage of men," acknowledged the court. And Justice Potter Stewart's majority opinion allowed that veterans' preferences are "an awkward -and many argue, unfair-exception to the widely shared view that merit and merit alone should prevail in the employment policies of the Government." But just showing that the law had a harmful effect on women was not enough, wrote Stewart. The question was whether the state law was designed to discriminate...
...richest member of the high court reporting last week was Justice Potter Stewart, who said he has assets of more than $1 million, not including the equity in his Washington home...