Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1957-07-11
Swapping Civil Rights

senators opposing the civil rights
bill are properly and effectively concen-
trating their efforts now on showing, in
terms OF the surrender of certain civil
rights, the cost imposed by this bill for
the protection of other civil rights, os-
tenSibly the right to vote. There is no
doubt that such costs are inherent in
the bill.
Senator Fulbright, in an able speech,
made an illustrative comparison between
the value Of certain civil rights involved
the value of the right of trial by Jury
and the value of the right to vote. He
recalled that the guarantee of trial by
jury is mentioned specifically four times
IN the Constitution, which in no place
provides unrestricted suffrage for every
citizen. More than relative values, how
ever, the Senator was stressing the pre-
occupation of the founders with right
that is fundamental in a free society,
and which is subject to damaging i'm
pairment in this bill.
1t remained for Senator Erwin, how
ever, in an outstanding discussion of the
jury trial issue, to point out the real
danger, as we see it, in this bills cir
convention of the jury trial principle.
That danger does not lie in any realistic
possibility that arbitrary, capriciouS or
tyrannical Federal judges will be sent
into the South and ruthlesSly begin
throwing into jail-for sentences re-
stricted only by personal discretion
men and women they find guilty Of
violating their injunctions. The danger
is IN the expedient advocacy, by men
anxious to accomplish an end which
they find Immediately desirable, of
broadening the injunctive process far
beyond its previously narrow field; per-
verting, in fact, its historical use, and
coupled with the power of punishment
for contempt, utilizing it in a new and
extensive field of criminal law.
We do not believe that Senator Err
win is seeing monsters under the bed,
or indulging in mere oratorical rhetoric,
when he says that if the Federal courts
are given power to suppress crime by
injunction in equity proceedings and
trial for contempt without jurieS, in
the field Of civil rights, to prevent Of
lenses already defined in ancient law as
criminal, there is no valid reason to
suppose that on some other day, when
people are frustrated and sickened by
inability to deal with crimes in another
field, some other well intentioned ad-
miniStration headed by President who
wants to accomplish what seems to be a
morally desirable and politically helpful
end, will not resort to the same subtle
evasion of basic principle of free gov
eminent.
The attempt to pack the Supreme
Court was made by an honorable and
upright Attorney General, under the
direction Of his President, as method
of accomplishing what they believed to
be desirable end This expedient ex-
tension of the injunctive and contempt
processes to enforce old laws in new
areas has been put forward by another
honorable and upright Attorney General
to get around admitted difficulties in
obtaining convictions by jury in civil
rights cases. He is doing it for what
he believes to be desirable end, and
his President is more familiar with the
end than with the means employed to
reach it.
We do not believe the parallel is
overdrawn. We applaud the Senators
Of the minority who are attempting to
show the cost in damage to one civil
right demanded as the price of strength
ening another. Those who defeated the
court packing plan were also, at one
stage, in the minority.