Curiam Opinion Research Articles

The Supreme Court of the United States, 1961-1962

T HAS COME to be a rare term of the Supreme Court when no decision of the Court attracts great popular attention and when no decision either reverses a prior holding of the Court or moves into a previously unoccupied area along the fringes of judicial space. This term was no exception. Several actions of the Court approached this and certainly at least two of the Court's decisions unqualifiedly did this. An all-time record was set by the Court in the number of cases disposed of during the term, 2,157. In the previous two terms records were also set with 1,928 cases (1960-61) and 1,822 cases (1959-60) disposed of in the respective terms. In these same years the Court also had a record number of cases remaining on the docket at the close of each term. This past term the number was 428. During this term 137 cases were argued (11 fewer than in the previous term), of which 100 were disposed of by 85 signed opinions and 21 by per curiam opinions. Sixteen cases were ordered reargued, an unusually large number. The writing of opinions was divided fairly evenly among the justices except for three understandable exceptions. Mr. Justice Black and Mr. Justice Stewart wrote twelve each, with Mr. Justice Douglas and Mr. Justice Clark close behind with eleven each, and they, in turn, closely followed by Mr. Chief Justice Warren, Mr. Justice Harlan, and Mr. Justice Brennan with ten each. Mr. Justice Frankfurter was restricted by illness in the middle of the term and wrote only four opinions. Mr. Justice Whittaker was forced by ill health to withdraw from the Court in midterm and thus wrote only two opinions. Mr. Justice Byron R. White, who succeeded Mr. Justice Whittaker, wrote three opinions in the short time he served. This year Mr. Justice Douglas lost his long-held championship in the field of dissenting opinions. For a decade, except for the 1954 term, he has held the lead in the annual posting of totals of dissenting opinions written. This year Mr. Justice Harlan wrote fourteen and Mr. Justice Douglas thirteen. Not far behind were Mr. Justice Black with eleven and Mr. Justice Clark with nine dissenting opinions. The other members trailed out with Mr. Justice Stewart (four), Mr. Chief Justice Warren and Mr. Justice Frankfurter (three each), Mr. Justice Brennan and Mr. Justice Whittaker (two each), and Mr. Justice White (one) in that order. In dissenting votes, as distinguished from dissenting opinions, Mr. Justice Harlan led the field with twenty-nine votes followed by Mr. Justice Douglas (twenty-four), Mr. Justice Black (twenty-one), Mr. Justice Clark (fifteen), Mr. Chief Justice Warren (fourteen), Mr. Justice Stewart (thirteen), Mr. Justice Frankfurter (eleven), Mr. Justice Whittaker (six), Mr. Justice Brennan (four),

Statesmanship or Craftsmanship: Current Conflict Over the Supreme Court

OR THE FIRST TIME in two decades the Supreme Court of the United States has run afoul of a sizeable segment of public opinion. Assuming a posture of guardianship in sensitive areas of constitutional liberty, the Court has become the object of bitter attacks from several and varied quarters. Much of the criticism is of the normal and usual kind, namely, that of the losers and their sympathizers who urge that some of the decisions either were not well reasoned or were unprecedented and that the cases should have been decided differently. Some of the critics, however, have made accusations of a more fundamental nature, accusations which strike at the integrity of the Court and challenge the principles on which the American system, as it has developed, is based. These criticisms cannot be dismissed as the blatherings of an insignificant but vocal minority since they have already been formalized in resolutions and bills now resting in the congressional hopper. The present course of judicial controversy began on May 17, 1954, when the Court outlawed racial segregation in state-supported schools.1 The controversial pattern was continued through the 1955 and 1956 terms of the Court with decisions covering a rather wide range of topics. Filling in the desegregation picture were three per curiam opinions in which the Court declared invalid racial segregation on public beaches and bath houses2 and public golf courses3 when such facilities were maintained by a state or city, and unanimously affirmed the ruling of a district court that a state law and city ordinance requiring segregation on buses in Montgomery, Alabama, were unconstitutional.4 A second group of decisions which upset further the already agitated critics involved an assertion of federal supremacy. On March 28, 1955, the Court held that the federal labor relations acts pre-empted the right of the Missouri Supreme Court to bar by injunction a strike against the AnheuserBusch brewing company in St. Louis.5 In May of 1956, the Railway Labor Act6 which provides in part that notwithstanding the law of any state a carrier and a union may sign a union shop contract, was held by the Court