The New York Court of Appeals and the United States Supreme Court, 1960–76

Abstract

Recent years have seen a growth of interest on the part of political scientists and lawyers in the functioning of the state judiciaries, especially of their high courts. Between 1954 and 1970 the few writers who paid attention to state courts focused largely upon their braking the liberal race-integration and criminal procedure decisions of the Warren Court. For example, Walter Murphy and Herman Pritchett in 1%1 described the successful efforts of the Florida Supreme Court to nullify a U.S. Supreme Court order that Mr. Virgil Hawkins, a Black, be admitted to the University of Florida Law School.' In 1970 Stephen Wasby accurately said that . . very clearly state court judges do not follow the U.S. Supreme Court's rulings automatically, regardless of the existence of the supremacy clause.' His example involved the aftermath of a Supreme Court case invalidating as racially biased Georgia's system for electing jurors for the defendant's trial. The defendant, one Williams, was condemned to death and then appealed to the Supreme Court. Wasby indicated what happened then.