"Charles L. Harness-Probable Cause" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harness Charles L)

court should take. Even if there is a federal question-- which I doubt-- we can turn it down. Since the
revision of the Judiciary Act in the twenties, we have been free to turn down practically any case we
wish-- excepting issues between the states, or the states and the United States government. It's a
question of policy. We can handle no more than a hundred to a hundred and fifty cases a year-- less then
ten percent of the appeals that come to us. Our every decision should throw light on some current judicial
problem and state principles for the guidance of the lower courts in thousands of similar cases. We did
this with the wiretapping cases, the desegregation cases, the school-prayer cases. But how many cases
involving this psi thing are currently pending in the lower courts? None at all, that I've heard about."
"Mr. Blandford?"
"I agree with Moore," said the Massachusetts justice thoughtfully. "We took considerable interest in
this kind of thing in Salem three hundred years ago. We burned people at the stake for less. We weren't
too sure about God, but we certainly believed in the Devil. I hope this isn't evidence of a trend. We're not
an ecclesiastical court of the Middle Ages. We can't go back. I don't think we should get involved. No,
never again."
"Thank you. Mr. Lovsky?"
Justice Lovsky stared suspiciously at the safe. "The whole thing smells. But I agree with Mr. Burke,
supra. We ought to take it. If we deny the cert, you'll have every J.P. in the country issuing warrants on
psi. Cf. Godwin. It's a return to the general warrants of eighteenth-century Britain, q.v. We had a little
revolution about that. Madison, Federalist Papers. The Bill of Rights, Madison, op. cit., would be down
the drain. In a few years we'll get a hundred petes for cert on the same point. Ibid. The time to stop it is
now."
"Mr. Randolph?"
Justice Randolph spoke on all occasions with slow incision, as though dictating, direct to the stone
cutter, immortal inscriptions for the entablature of a majestic new federal building. He clipped:
*CONSTITVTIONAL*QVESTION*
And then was gloomy because the first word, under the circumstances, was possibly superfluous. His
law clerks always conferred with those of Justice Lovsky, fitting, with consummate artistry, Lovsky's
footnotes to Randolph's headnotes. The result read like pages in Corpus Juris Tertium. This procedure
required that the justices always agree; they found this a small price to pay for the exquisite result.
"Mr. Edmonds?"
"Isn't it a strange coincidence? Here we are in the opening months of nineteen eighty-four." He tossed
a book on the table. "It's Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four-- the ultimate regimented state. All citizens
under police surveillance twenty-four hours a day. No privacy at any time. The police have even installed
closed-circuit TV in homes and apartments. When this book was popular, forty years ago, many people
laughed. It was absurd. It couldn't happen in America. Well, it has happened. It's here now-- except
clairtapping is even worse than spy TV. It penetrates the privacy of our minds. We must deny its use to
the police."
"You sound as though you really believe in this stuff," said Godwin.
Edmonds shrugged.
"Thank you, Mr. Edmonds. Madam Nord?"
"My argument for granting certiorari will, I think, seem totally incompetent and irrelevant to most of
you. And I expect that my distinguished brother, the Senior Associate Justice, may have a stroke. In a
word, I think Tyson is innocent. Also, I think we ought to open the safe."
There was an embarrassed silence.
Then came Oliver Godwin's stage whisper: "Don't knock it, boys. Never forget, we're the only high
court in the world with our own Madam."
Helen Nord led the laughter.
The Chief Justice rapped the table with his knuckles. "We will vote. Madam Nord?"
"To grant."
The vote went backwards, in inverse order of seniority. The theory, which seemed utterly fallacious to