Word: ervine
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Throughout the debate, it was apparent that the forces of the segregationist South were beaten-and knew it. "The way things are," North Carolina Democrat Sam Ervin said wryly, "I don't think I could even get a denunciation of the Crucifixion in the bill." When Georgia's Richard Brevard Russell, field general for the segregationists in a dozen civil rights battles of yore, returned to the Senate chamber from a long illness the day before the cloture motion came to a vote, he needed no more than a glance to see that the cause was hopeless...
Chilling Unionism. When the NLRB appealed to the Supreme Court, Darlington hired an unusual advocate-North Carolina's Democratic Senator (and ex-State Supreme Court justice) Sam J. Ervin Jr. No law prevents members of the House or Senate from trying cases in any court except the U.S. Court of Claims, though purists looked askance at a U.S. Senator representing a private client against the U.S. Government-to say nothing of the fact that Ervin's constituents include thousands of North Carolina textile workers. Ervin, however, insisted that he was "fighting for the economic freedom of all Americans...
Speaking for the court, Justice John M. Harlan last week seemed at first to be sympathetic to Ervin's pitch. "An employer has the absolute right to terminate his entire business for any reason he pleases," ruled Harlan. To hold otherwise "would represent such a startling innovation that it should not be entertained without the clearest manifestation of legislative intent or unequivocal judicial precedent...
That said, Harlan then proceeded to reject Ervin's case. "A partial closing is an unfair labor practice," Harlan ruled, "if motivated by a purpose to chill unionism in any of the remaining plants of the single employer and if the employer may reasonably have foreseen that such closing will likely have that effect...
...said Ervin, but the state or county "has to hitchhike a thousand miles to get here." What he meant was that the bill provides that a three-judge court in the District of Columbia is the only one allowed to adjudicate such matters; the provision was written into the bill to keep voting issues out of the hands of segregationist Southern judges. Said Ervin: "This seals shut the door of every courthouse except that in the District of Columbia." He also pointed out that the rules of the D.C. district court allow witnesses to be subpoenaed only from within...