The Constitution on Campus

The Constitution on Compus

At a time when the emotional politics of confrontation has moved from the streets to the courtroom, it is the exceptional judge who can remain dispassionate. Federal Judge James E. Doyle, of Wisconsin's western district, has done just that--under most difficult circumstances: cases involving student dissent and campus unrest. His decisions have protected the individual rights of students, even while underscoring their obligation to respect the law.

In case after case, Judge Doyle has held that many regulations--for example, disciplinary procedures and dress codes in public schools and universities --are unconstitutional. Relying primarily on the 14th Amendment due process guarantee, he has insisted that students facing disciplinary action by state schools have many of the procedural rights of defendants in criminal cases. Doyle's opinions have so impressed educators that he often receives letters from reform-minded administrators asking advice on new school regulations.

Among Doyle's rulings:

> When the presence of Dow Chemical interviewers on the University of Wisconsin's Madison campus led to raucous protests, the school suspended ten students under a regulation that prohibited misconduct. Judge Doyle struck down the rule, holding that the standard of "misconduct" alone was unconstitutionally vague. "The facts of life," he said, "have long undermined the concepts, such as in loco parent is, that have been invoked historically for conferring upon university authorities virtually limitless disciplinary discretion." His decision was upheld on appeal. -- At the Oshkosh campus of Wisconsin

State University, militant black students burst into the president's office, threw official papers on the floor, insulted the president, and tried to force him to sign a list of demands. Next day the president suspended 90 students for their part in the action. Doyle ordered that the students either be given prompt hearings or be reinstated pending final disposition of their cases. On the other hand, Doyle upheld the suspension of riotous students at the state university's Whitewater branch. The difference was that at Whitewater the militants had received an adequate preliminary hearing. -- When a high school junior with long hair was sent home for violating a school-board dress code in Williams Bay, Wis., Doyle ordered him back to class without benefit of scissors. On the assumption that a school board would not make the same demands of an adult night student with long hair, Doyle suggested that "it is time to broaden the constitutional community by including within its protections younger people whose claim to dignity matches that of their elders."*

Straight Questions. Incensed by Doyle's rulings, the lower house of the Wisconsin legislature passed a resolution calling for a constitutional convention to make federal judgeships elective rather than appointive. Said Assembly Speaker Harold Froehlich in arguing for the measure: "Judge Doyle is using the U.S.

Constitution to protect people who are trying to tear down society." The resolution was defeated in the state senate.

At 54, Doyle is the product of a generation whose campus gripes rarely reached beyond fraternity disputes. Today, by contrast, he says: "Students are asking straight questions and demanding straight answers. And too often it turns out that the 'conventional wisdom' from people my age is full of holes."

Modest in both dress and conversation, Doyle has been a low-key voice of progressive thought in Wisconsin for more than 20 years. The son of an Oshkosh paint merchant, he sold copies of the Saturday Evening Post to help make his way through the University of Wisconsin and Columbia Law School, where he was on the Law Review. After graduation in 1940, he clerked for Supreme Court Justice James Byrnes, then became his aide when Byrnes was appointed Secretary of State. After going into private law practice in Madison in 1948, Doyle devoted his spare time to rebuilding a moribund state Democratic Party.

War Unto Death. Doyle was an early foe of Senator Joseph McCarthy. "Even before McCarthy's phony Communists-in-Government crusade," Doyle said in 1952, "we in Wisconsin had come to despise him for his utter lack of honesty and conviction." As state Democratic Party chairman that year, Doyle wired his congratulations to President-elect Dwight Eisenhower. When reporters asked if he had any kind words for McCarthy, Doyle replied: "And to Senator McCarthy, war unto death."

In 1960 Doyle earned the enmity of the Kennedys by heading the national draft-Stevenson movement. When the federal judgeship for Wisconsin's western district became vacant in 1963, Doyle was among those recommended by the Wisconsin Bar. But President Kennedy ignored the endorsements and appointed a J.F.K. loyalist. The nomination was so blatantly political that the Senate held up confirmation for two years. Ironically, Doyle was named to the bench in 1965 by a President students still vilify: Lyndon B. Johnson.

* Last week Doyle expanded the constitutional protections to teachers. He ordered the reinstatement of four professors suspended from the state university at Whitewater for their alleged roles in a recent campus disturbance. In not providing the educators with a hearing before suspension, Doyle said, the school had acted with "complete failure to accord the rudiments of due process of law."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.