Ramsey Clark Argues Law Must Stress Rehabilitation

"Nothing tests the character of a people like their penology," said U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clak speaking at Lowell Lecture Hall yesterday.

Clark, in an address sponsored by the Harvard Law School Forum, endorsed the importance of reform in criminal rehabilitation. He said that corrections in the past may have turned more people to crime than away from it.

The Attorney General said that until such institutions are perfected, questions about the legality of wiretapping or unimpeded interrogation are "gritty incidentals."

The great legal question in a time of monumental change, he said, is whether we can preserve social stability and, at the same time, enlarge personal liberty. It is not true that public safety is in "inverse proportion" to individual liberty, said Clark, who was recently attacked for not prosecuting Black Power advocate Stokely Carmichael.

Clark also outlined four things law schools must do:

* Produce more lawyers to fullfill our obligation to the unrepresented.

* Prepare students to anticipate the legal problems of the future.

* Build the "generalist-specialist" to maintain cohesion in the law.

* Produce an interest in public service.