Civil Liberties and Civil Rights

The Supreme Court's recent decision on Governor Ross Barnett was both encouraging and frustrating. The Court held that Barnett may be tried without jury for contempt of a U.S. Court order directing him to stop obstructing James Meredith's admission into the University of Mississippi. But at the same time it warned in a footnote that the conviction could be reversed if the penalty imposed were not "petty."

Viewed in the perspective of a long battle against arbitrary judicial power, against government by injunction, the decision marked an advance for civil liberties. Before passage of the Norris-LaGuardia Act of 1932, federal judges often issued injunctions against strikes and other union activities, leveling harsh sentences for criminal contempt without calling upon the grand jury for an indictment or allowing trial by jury. This unusual legal power of both accusing and judging has a long common law tradition, although it is inconsistent with the whole grand jury and petit jury system. Now the court has at least ruled that trial without jury will be allowed only if punishment is commensurate with sentences for petty offenses.

But to Negroes the advance in civil liberties will seem a set-back for civil rights; Ross Barnett is assured a light sentence. Long accustomed to legal inequities, Negroes will note with bitterness that this libeal shift came in the case of a Mississippi governor whose defiance of federal law led to two deaths and risked the lives of many others.