Word: brennan
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...authority to search." That has always been true for people charged with serious crimes; this time the court was refusing to make a distinction or to call for less intrusive treatment even though a traffic offense was the only reason for the arrest. The minority of Thurgood Marshall, William Brennan and William Douglas thought that such distinctions were precisely what judges should consider in trying to decide whether a search was reasonable as required by the Fourth Amendment...
...down to consider their current harvest of pornography cases, they found themselves in rare and unanimous agreement on one point: the procedures then in effect for handling the problem were a hopeless failure. Thus they concluded that the entire legal definition of obscenity had to be reexamined. Justice William Brennan, chief architect of the court's gradual course toward liberalization, argued urgently that virtually all pornography bans should be scrapped as constitutionally unworkable. With no less force, Chief Justice Warren Burger spoke in favor of stricter standards, "more concrete than those in the past." Last week, in a decision...
...court's dissenting minority freely conceded that the prior attempts to establish limits to pornography had failed miserably. "After 15 years of experimentation and debate," said William Brennan, "I am reluctantly forced to the conclusion that none of the available formulas" are acceptable. He favored dropping all prohibitions except those to protect juveniles and adults who wish to avoid smut. As a result he opposed the Chief Justice's new effort at definition. "Even a legitimate, sharply focused state concern for the morality of the community," he said, "cannot . . . justify an assault on the protections of the First...
Officially, the court has tried to follow the guidelines of Justice William Brennan who declared that nothing could be banned as pornographic unless it predominantly "appeals to a prurient interest," affronts "contemporary community standards," and is "utterly without redeeming social importance." That definition proved so elastic that it has been stretched to permit almost anything, as can be attested at many a neighborhood-movie marquee or magazine rack...
...illegal entrepreneurs unless he has something of value to offer them." Treading a delicate line, Rehnquist ruled that "it is only when the Government's deception actually implants the criminal design in the mind of the defendant" that the official conduct becomes unacceptable. Potter Stewart, William Brennan, William Douglas and Thurgood Marshall constituted a dismayed minority. As Stewart said: "The purpose of the entrapment defense cannot be to protect persons who are 'otherwise innocent.' Rather, it must be to prohibit unlawful governmental activity in instigating crime." The focus, in other words, should be not on the defendant...