Clearing the Docket

With its current term drawing to a close, the court was busy last week clearing the docket:

White Will. The Justices refused to stop integration of Philadelphia's Girard College. Really a prep school, the institution was set up in 1848 for "poor, white male orphans," by the will of Colonial Entrepreneur Stephen Girard. The N.A.A.C.P. has been trying to break the will since 1954. When the Supreme Court held that Negroes should be admitted because the school was being run by publicly appointed trustees, the state's orphan's court simply appointed private trustees and the whole case had to be fought over again. Last week's action left standing a lower court finding that the state, through the orphan's court, was still involved in discrimination. The day after the decision, Trustee President John Diemand announced that the school will move to admit Negro orphans "as soon as possible," perhaps by next fall.

Habeas Corpus. When James Carafas' five-year sentence for burglary and grand larceny ended, his freedom seemed to finish off his federal habeas corpus petition calling on state authorities to show that they were legally "holding his body." But a unanimous court was impressed by the continuing "disabilities or burdens" that may result from a criminal conviction--loss of the right to vote, for instance, or the right to serve on a jury. As a result, Carafas still has a right to press his petition and hence to try to prove that he was improperly imprisoned. The court emphasized, however, that a petitioner must still be in custody when he begins such a proceeding.

Unprivate Property. In Logan Valley Shopping Center near Altoona, Pa., union members picketing a nonunion store were barred from the parking lot. That seemed legal enough, since the lot was private property. But, said the Supreme Court, in some circumstances the public cannot be barred from private property. Keeping the picketers out violated the First Amendment's guarantee of free expression. "Because the shopping center serves as the community business block" and is open to the public, Justice Thurgood Marshall argued, the center is practically public property as far as the First Amendment is concerned. Justice Hugo Black was outspokenly annoyed with the 6-to-3 opinion. "Whether this court likes it or not," he chided, "the Constitution recognizes and supports the concept of private property. This means to me that there is no right to picket on the private premises of another."

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