Law Professor Heads Committee To Assist High Court Reporters

Vern Countryman, professor of Law, has been named head of a committee designed to insure better press cover-age of Supreme Court decisions. The committee, which is sponsored by the Association of American Law Schools, is made up of 43 law professors from American universities.

The committee plans to help journalists deal with Supreme Court cases in two ways. It will send professors to the court on Mondays to help reporters understand the decisions which are handed down, and it will assign a professor to write a memorandum for the press on each important case that comes before the court.

These memoranda will discuss the basic issues at question in the cases, the probable arguments by each side, and the significance of the possible decisions.

In a telephone interview last night, Countryman said that his committee was formed as a result of a growing concern over the quality of the reporting of Supreme Court decisions.

Ignorant Reporters

"Most of the writing in the press has been done by people who don't know what they are talking about," he said.

Six other Harvard professors are serving on Countryman's committee. Writing memoranda on cases now before the Court are Paul A. Freund, Carl M. Loeb University Professor, Ernest J. Brown, professor of Law, and Yale Kamisar and Charles A. Wright, visiting professor of Law. Mark DeWolfe '28, and Albert M. Sacks, professors of Law, still waiting to be assigned cases.