Decisions

> When police in Jacksonville, Fla., saw a car containing two black men and two white women, they seized the couples on a tried-and-true catch-all charge: vagrancy. The couples, they said, were "prowling by auto." Police make 100,000 "vagrancy" arrests a year, according to FBI statistics, though in recent years some of these laws have been voided by courts across the country. Last week the Supreme Court struck down the Jacksonville ordinance, 7-0, in language so sweeping that few vagrancy laws in the U.S. will remain constitutional. The ordinance, deriving from medieval English laws against idleness, applies to "rogues and vagabonds," "common nightwalkers," "habitual loafers" and the like. It was so vague, said Justice William Douglas, that it gave "unfettered discretion" to police and did not clearly tell citizens what conduct was forbidden.

> Conviction for rape is rare in New York because the state requires corroboration of the victim's testimony. Family Court Judge Nanette Dembitz gave a twist to the rules in the case of a 13-year-old Manhattan youth. In three separate instances, the boy had entered a housing project immediately behind a girl, forced her at knifepoint to ride the elevator to the top floor, led her to the roof, placed her personal property on a window ledge, and forced her to undress. According to Judge Dembitz, the three cases corroborated one another: "The method of operation was sufficiently similar and distinctive to establish a likelihood that the same individual committed the acts against the three girls." With that, plus the girls' identification of the boy, Judge Dembitz found him guilty and he was placed in a state training school.

> When the Louis Budds inspected their new house in Tampa, Fla., they noticed a minor flaw: there was no water fit to drink. They sued the sellers of the house, only to be swamped with a tidal wave of legal argument. The 49-page defense brief, according to Florida Appellate Judge William C. Pierce, showed "exhaustive industry . . . citing and arguing 48 cases, five textbooks, four encyclopedias and one statutory provision. It abounds with sedulous references and dissertations on, among other things, percolating waters, the statute of frauds . . . express oral warranty theories . . . and the pyramiding of inferences. [But] when all is said and done, this was a rather simple case." In short, were the Budds entitled to water, and did they get it? Said the court: Yes and no.

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