Word: dissent
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...ANYONE who witnessed the bricks, riot sticks tear gas, and terror of last Wednesday night, the drawbacks of streetfighting as a tactic of dissent are evident. Some of the costs were immediate and obvious: the injuries to bystanders, demonstrators, and police: the destruction of property without a clear purpose: the rising tolerance for violence which such episodes bring...
WELFARE. A five-man majority recently ruled that welfare recipients are constitutionally entitled to hearings before their stipends are cut off. Burger's dissent typified his view that the court should not intervene when other parts of Government have recently acted. Arguing that regulations going into effect this summer will give welfare clients the same rights as the court ruling, Burger rapped the majority's action as "another manifestation of the now-familiar constitutionalizing syndrome: once some presumed flaw is observed, the court then eagerly accepts the invitation to find a constitutionally 'rooted' remedy. We ought...
OBSCENITY. In recent years the court has held that First Amendment guarantees of free speech protect a wide range of material, from Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer to potboilers like Lust Pool and Shame Agent. Here, too, Burger would back off. In a dissent from a ruling that the film I, a Woman is not obscene, Burger argued that the court "should not inflexibly deny to each of the states the power to adopt and enforce its own standards...
...three-year-old precedent that entitles juveniles to "the essentials of due process and fair treatment," a 5-to-3 majority of the court ruled that juveniles must be proved guilty "beyond a reasonable doubt," which is the more rigorous standard used when adults are prosecuted. Burger's dissent, joined by Justice Stewart (Justice Hugo Black dissented on other grounds), argued that no constitutional mandate forced the court to upset state procedures. Burger expressed fear that the decision would "spell the end of a generously conceived program of compassionate treatment...
Burger's views could be critical in several significant cases involving capital punishment, free speech and dissent, which have been put off until the arrival of the new ninth Justice because the court might be divided 4 to 4 on them. So far, though, Burger's opinions have not added up to a clear-cut augury of the future. University of Wisconsin Law Professor William Foster points out that Burger can "sit around and make broadside pronouncements when he is clearly on the losing side, but it may be tougher when he is working for that fifth vote...