The Supreme Court: What the Session Holds

Even when it decides not to decide, the Supreme Court decides a great deal. So it was last week when the court chose not to review a desegregation decision appealed by Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas; the effect will be that all six states must comply with a federal court of appeals order directing an immediate speedup in the integration of all public schools. The court also refused to interfere with Pennsylvania’s practice of transporting students to parochial schools, thus leaving for another day further practical definition of the line between church and state. Jimmy Hoffa will stay in jail because the court declined to reconsider its decision upholding his jury-tampering conviction. To Martin Luther King, another refusal to reconsider meant that he will probably soon go to jail for five days in connection with a 1963 civil rights demonstration in Birmingham that violated a court injunction.

Important though such decisions not to review are, the court will soon be doing the more demanding work of actually ruling on vital issues. In announcing which cases it will hear, it indicated the shape of the 1967-68 term. In one case, the court will consider whether the one-man, one-vote doctrine should be extended beyond the states to local governments. The nine Justices will also decide whether the Sixth Amendment guaranteeing a jury trial should include all state misdemeanor cases for the first time.

Bugging. The court has agreed to rule on whether seamy, sex-oriented publications and movies may properly be banned for juveniles. Another case asks whether a chronic alcoholic can constitutionally be jailed for public drunkenness. The court will have to mull over the traditional judicial reluctance to interfere with prison administration when it reviews a federal court order to desegregate Alabama jails and prisons. It will also decide whether prohibition of draft-card burning is unconstitutional (as the First Circuit Court of Appeals has held) or constitutional (as the Second and Eighth have held).

Taking a further look at the right to privacy, the court has agreed to rule whether or not an unconstitutional search occurs when a phone booth is bugged by a device on top of but not physically penetrating the booth. It will also decide whether various state laws permitting police to stop and frisk a suspicious person violate the constitutional ban on unreasonable searches. And, in still another case involving the rights of a potential criminal defendant, it will consider whether requiring the purchase of a federal gambling stamp constitutes unlawful compulsion to provide self-incriminatory information.