Herald and Review from Decatur, Illinois • Page 6

6 DECATUR HERALD Decatur, Illinois, Thursday, July 6, 1972 What Is Judges1 Role? Court Line of Cleavage Bared Editorials oor opinions Political Reality 2l By James J. Kilpatrick that if their own personal opinions were decisive, they would vote to abolish capital punishment. But constitutional questions ought not to be resolved upon a judge's opinion of what "the average citizen" or "the great mass of citizens" might regard as shocking or immoral. Such a view converts the Supreme Court into a legislative body; it permits a majority of five to impose their own naked will upon our fundamental law. It seems to me that liberals, no less than conservatives, should protest the activist concept.

For the past 20 years, to be sure, activism has worked to the liberals' advantage. They have found it agreeable. But if liberals accept, in principle, the power of judges to make sweeping changes in law on their own notions of moral acceptability, liberals will be hard put to object when the composition of the court changes, and the wind shifts. Many persons who abhor the death penalty, and agree that capital punishment has been imposed irrationally and ineffectually in the past, will rejoice in what the five activists have done. But those who love the law, and believe in the separation of powers, will emphatically condemn the way in which they did it.

(c) The Washington Star ecutive and legislative branches get much more hard-nosed about evaluating existing state and local governmental operations. The decisions made this spring on bond financing will make wrestling with tax matters tougher, because the lawmakers have built in to future budgets interest costs that eventually will have to be paid through general revenue funds. The legislature's inability to control its own bickering enough to give more serious review to the Ogilvie budget does not bode well for its capability to cut the fat from present state operations either. Nor does the failure of Gov. Ogilvie, or his Democratic opponent, Daniel Walker, to make any legislative proposal for the constitutionally-mandated state board of education give reason for optimism about how state government will oversee the use of any funds it ends up sending in greatly increased amounts to local schools.

The legislature this spring finally succeeded in putting itself out of its own agony in time for the busy political season ahead. But especially where taxes and spending are concerned, the worst is yet to come. IT WAS procrastination. Sing that lyric to the tune of the old song, "Fascination" and you have a pretty good theme for the recently concluded session of the Illinois General Assembly. The legislators spent a lot of time singing off key in the shower this spring in Springfield for the little they accomplished.

They did succeed pretty well in pushing aside the economic realities until after the fall election. It was political reality especially the mood of taxpayers about any tax increases that the lawmakers did deal with. The major compromise of the session was a trade by Republicans of approval for giving Chicago Democrats access to bond financing for mass transit and education in exchange for passage of Gov. Ogilvie's capital development bond fund. In their other major move, both parties were able to agree or.

another effort to lift the personal property tax from most individual Illinois taxpayers. These measures will allow Gov. Ogilvie and Mayor Daley to go through the fiscal year without any major reductions in their programs and without a tax increase. The compromise put off until another time the need to enact the new taxes to pay the principal and interest on the fcond projects or to- make appropriate reductions in on-going programs. While the compromises got the politicians over the election year hump, they simply postpone some hard decisions just ahead.

That's especially so for state government. By 1979, the state must ibolish the personal property tax on corporations as well as individuals. Where the tax on individuals means the state has to make up only $30 million a year in lost revenue for local governments, in the case of the levy on corporations, the lost revenue will be $270 million annually. In addition, it is increasingly likely that the courts will require an end to use of property taxes as the primary means of financing local schools, requiring state funding instead. The combination of those two tilings will make it imperative for whoeVer is the next governor and for the next legislature to look with a mon open mind at state tax hikes.

It also will require, unless state taxes really are to soar, that both the ex sentences within their constitutional powers. What, then, is material? It is Marshall's personal assessment that counts. He states it with breathtaking certainty. Capital punishment, he says, is unconstitutional "because it is morally unacceptable to the people of the United States at this time in their history." Farther along, Marshall says: "Assuming knowledge of all the facts presently available regarding capital punishment, the average citizen would, in my opinion, find it shocking to his conscience and sense of justice. For this reason alone, capital punishment cannot stand." Still again, he says: "I believe that the great mass of citizens would conclude on the basis of the material already considered that the death penalty is immoral and therefore unconstitutional." To the four dissenters, these are wholly extraneous considerations.

Both Burger and Blackmun went to pains to say Pros Look Back Washington Witlv its explosion of opinions last week in the capital punishment cases, the Supreme Court laid bare the great line of cleavage that divides the old Warren court from the new Nixon It is the line that defines the role of judges. This is the most important aspect of the decision that will be known to historians as Furman vs. Georgia. For all practical purposes, the court voted 5-4 to prohibit the imposition of death sentences under existing state and federal laws. The immediate and dramatic consequence is that death sentences must be commuted for some 600 prisoners across the nation.

Otherwise, the impact will be small. There is no convincing evidence that the mere existence of the death penalty has served as a deterrent to heinous crimes. So far as law and order is concerned, the sun will come up in the morning as blood-red as it set last night. The significance of this landmark case lies in. its exposition of the fundamental division between those who 25 Years Ago In the Herald Contributions to the overseas relief drive, may total 3,300 pounds in goods and over $200 in cash, Jennie Wells, president of the Council of Church Women, announced.

Dr. Merton E. Burhans has been appointed director of medical research for Irwin, Neisler Co. The six-room ranch-type bungalow at 508 South Edward street, just erected by the Sproat Homes Co. was sold to Marsden B.

Shatter. IN AN EDITORIAL we said: Independence Day dawned clear and fine, and quiet, in Decatur this year. Only an occasional explosion was heard and that far away on the perimeter of thft city. All day the silence continued practically unbroken. The Fourth of July, calm and serene, might have been Easter Sunday.

An excellent beginning was made in Decatur and now is the time, before the manufacturers and distributors make definite plans for 1948, to extend the citywide prohibitions to the county, or even to the state. Regulation inside the city limits cannot be satisfactory when the banned fireworks may be bought just outside of town. Now that we are out of the fireworks habit, one small asset on the ledger of war, it would be shameful could be criminal to slip back into the old dangerous ways. Let's keep the Fourth of July safe and sane, at least for those who stay off the highways. Monetary Conference Needed Kids Listened believe in judicial activism, and those who believe in judicial restraint.

The activists on the court, led in this case by Justice Thurgood Marshall, believe it proper to rest decisions upon their own subjective readings of what is "morally unacceptable" or "shocking to the conscience." The defenders of restraint Burger, Blackmun, Powell and Rehnquist repudiate that viewpoint altogether. Marshall's long concurring opinion is a classic statement of the activist position. It is immaterial, in this view, that the framers of the Eighth Amendment never intended that "cruel and unusual punishment" should exclude the death penalty. It is immaterial that an unbroken line of judicial precedents one of them only a year old has supported the constitutionality of capital punishment. It is immaterial that four times within the past 11 years, Congress explicitly has sanctioned the death penalty.

It is immaterial that 40 states have thought such Washington The Old Democratic Pros were sitting in a smoke-filled room. No one was smiling. "Is anyone here going to Miami?" There was silence. "I ran for delegate," one pol said, "but I was beaten by a kid who plays drums with a rock group called the 'Meat "Huh, I ran for delegate and was beaten by a 19-year-old girl who turned out to be a guy, after the votes were counted." "I've been going to Democratic conventions for 30 years, 20 of as chairman of my delegation," a white-haired pro said. "I've given my all to the party.

There isn't a judge in my state who doesn't owe his job to me. There isn't a federal marshal or a postmaster who can't say Big Al wasn't the greatest friend he ever had. When the people wanted roads, they came to me; when they wanted housing, Big Al was there; when they wanted a little something to tide them over, they knew my door was never closed. This time, when it came to choosing a delegate to the convention, what did they do? They elected a black woman jockey." "Jeez, Al! It's not going to be the same Democratic convention without us." "What happened to all of us?" a bold, florid man asked. "What happened?" "I'll tell you what happened!" a man with a diamond stickpin The I fa A Mil GREATER UNCERTAINTY has entered the world monetary system.

A better mechanism is needed to provide for exchange rate flexibility and for adjustments in balance of payments. These are facts underlined by Great Britain's decision to let the pound float1 and permit its value be determined by supply and demand. Britain let the pound float when its domestic economic situation required it. Doing this, in effect, devalued the pound, thereby giving Britain a trade advantage over other nations who maintained their fixed ex Bobby, Boris and Leo agreements which we can break when internal economic conditions demand it." Other nations made little complaint about the British action, probably because they realized that the pound is overvalued and because thay would probably have done the same thing if they had been in the position of Prime Minister Edward Heath. Britain's action was followed by Denmark's krone slipping outside the 2lA per cent Common Market limits.

And for a time it was feared the Italian lire would also. The significance is that the Common Market countries insist that fixed exchange rates are good for trade and that they are necessary for common support for farmers. One result of the British "float" has been that West Germany has decided to abandon its policy of free market decisions in monetary matters and its acceptance of the French policy of monetary exchange controls. Such controls are regarded by many authorities as acting to restrain the natural flow of trade and to keep trade from expanding as fast as it would otherwise. The multiplication of exchange controls along with the need for nations to unexpectedly "float" their currencies are new proof that the world monetary system needs a major revamping.

A world monetary conference Is urgently needed if world trade is to prosper as it should. By Art Buchwald in his tie shouted. We did it to ourselves!" "How's that, Charley?" so- meone asked. "Remember "when the kids were acting up and raising hell around the country?" doesn't?" "Remember what we told them? Wre told them instead of demonstrating in the streets and closing down the schools that they should work within the system." "That's right," Big Al said. "I remember myself saying this country was so designed that you could get anything you wanted by working within the system." "Well, that's what the little stinkers did They decided to work within the system, and now we're out on our butts." "But we didn't really mean for them to work within the system," the bald man said.

"That was just a figure of speech like 'Have a nice day' or 'Give my best to your "Of course it," someone we didn't mean else said. "We THE MOVES of the players themselves are getting as complicated as any chess strategy. First the American, Bobby Fischer, balked at gettting to the world chess championship match in Iceland. Then the Russian, Boris Spassky, decided to protest Fischer's delay of the match by delaying it further. One suspects that the match already has.

started with Boris Exchange Table A guest In one of the back rows at a big church wedding reported that the young women in the wedding party also had pretty hair. change rates. This should stimulate British trade and industry and increase the of employment. According to two international agreements Britain was not supposed to do what it did. The Smithsonian agreement made in Washington in December set the value of the pound at $2.60, with a 4Vi per cent variation.

And the Common Market agreement made late in April narrowed this variation to 2V per cent for all Common Market countries. Britain's action, in effect, said: "We interpret the international monetary pacts we have made to be voluntary and Bobby each doing his best to "psych" the other. It's as if they think they can checkmate the other guy before even a pawn is moved on a board. Sounds as if it's the opening of an American baseball season. Who says chess is a game for gentlemen? Leo Durocher would feel right at home in company of Bobby and Boris.

the Drain Thurman's failure to grasp even after three years on the Council how local government really works in Peoria. Thurman's talk about the "voting public" becomes a joke when you realize that ten of our local governments are composed of people who aren't even elected. They are simply appointed in a strange variety of ways. And Thurman's refusal to tolerate even a study of the system will only insure that nothing is done very quickly to correct that situation. His con-c of "representative government" boggles the mind.

Alderman Richard Carver put the problem we face in perspective when he told Thurman that if we didn't begin to make our local government more businesslike soon the federal government certainly will continue to take more and more responsibility away from us. Sooner or later something will have to be done about our local governmental mess if for no other reason than to be certain that we qualify for all those other federal funds Thurman seeks. It's a shame that Thurman' had to stick his head in the sand and let this $28,000 go somewhere else to help somebody else. That may be charitable but it strikes us as being something other than the way the voting public in Peoria would like to see its local government run. meant they should work within the system, but do by working for us." "Gentlemen," Charley said.

"Our biggest mistake was not that we told them to work within tiie system, but that we never knew what the system was all about. Not one man in this room ever dreamed someone else could use the system as we did to control the oarty "Well," said one pol, "I think it's a pretty lousy system if anyone can take it over just because he has more votes." "You're damn right it Is," said Big Al. "If I had known what they had on their minds. I would have advised them to go into the streets and have their heads bashed in!" "The thing to do now," one pol said, "is to change the system so it can't happen again." "It's too late," said Charley, "they have control of the party, the convention and the system." "Well," said Big Al, "we can't sit around here blowing cigar smoke at each other. What do we do?" "This is what we do," Charley said.

"We go down to Miami next week and demonstrate." "We can't even get into the convention hall," a pol protested. "In the streets, dummy." Charley said, in the streets." Copyright, Timesl Los Angeles be the least of the bad effects. We've experienced before the chain of events set in motion by price ceilings on food. A price freeze in the meat supply line would almost certainly lead to rationing, black markets and the layers of bureaucracy and corruption such moves engender. Lifting the Import quotas at least holds to the free-market concept, counting on the law of supply and demand to ease the pinch.

Consumer demand in the affluent society has outstripped even the fast-rising supply for the time being. Until the supply can be stepped up further and it takes time to grow food animals the choice is between paying a higher price or cutting back on the amount of meat consumed. Since urban dwellers now far outnumber farmers, it might have been better politics to clamp a lid on meat prices and hang the consequences. The urban consumers would have been happier with it, at least for a few months. But for the long run, we think the President's decision was the wiser.

Repealing the law of supply and demand never has worked well; there's no reason to believe it would work any better now, in an election year or any other. Exchange Table Those Rising Prices Down Peoria Journal Star The last time we counted therc there were 14 different, full-fledged local governments serving and taxing the people of Peoria. The maze of local councils, boards, authorities, and commissions looks more like a Rube Goldberg contraption than a system of government. The problem of deciding who Is supposed to do what is always with us and unless a local problem grows to monstrous proportions the usual answer is buck-passing by politicians and administrators alike. There is a lot of talk about co operation" and but it takes places so rarely that we make a news story out of the event when it does.

In such a situation, it seems absurd to see the Peoria City Council throw away a $28,000 federal grant for the sole purpose of trying to get our local governments to work together efficiently and sensibly. Alderman Danny Thurman, who put together the 5-4 rejection, said he looked upon the federal money as "one more step in the direction toward removing the power of the voting public to run their government the way they think it should be run." That's pretty strange talk coming from the guy who got elected by saying the federal government rather than Peorians should manage urban renewal in Peoria. More important, it illustrates mooo Chicago Daily News When. the rising price of meat brings howls from consumers coast to coast, the President has a problem on his hands. Especially in an election year, consumers can't be ignored.

Neither can the producers and processors, for that matter. But tampering with the supply line of such a vital product as meat is a touchy business. The Price Commission had recommended that controls be put on raw agriculture products that are now exempt, but Mr. Nixon refused to go that far. Instead, he removed the import quotas on meat, in the hope that increased supplies from abroad will have a stabilizing effect on prices.

At best, this is an interim measure. Even Mr. Nixon conceded that the effect would not be immediate, and that sterner measures might be in the offing if prices continue to soar. So to a degree the complaints that what he has done is "political tokenism" and probably ineffectual can be taken seriously. What these charges fail to take into account, though, is that the alternate courses all look worse.

A clampdown on meat and other farm prices would infuriate the farmers, to be sure, but the political damage could "SMILE, YOU'RE ON CANDID CAMERA!.