Freund Report

astronomically, eventually not even Justice Douglas will be able to digest it all. In the future the Federal court system may require Freund's NCA. For the present, the doubts surrounding the NCA's necessity and constitutionality warrant further study and debate.

Whatever future examination of the Supreme Court caseload concludes, Professor Freund's philosophy should be kept in mind: "Our proposals are not of a political or ideological nature. They are neither conservative or liberal. Rather, they strike at a very moral problem between the Supreme Court's responsibility and the exercise of that responsibility." He recently wrote, "few, I think, would wish to challenge...the underlying moral principle that one in whom the responsibility is reposed should in truth perform the function. Few would disagree, I believe, with the diagnosis that optimum conditions do not now exist for the work of the Court and that there is every reason to expect that the dimensions of the problems will grow even more severe."

What Freund fails to provide is a clear definition of time's function in the Supreme Court's work and whether time is the primary criterion for judicial screening and review. Though the number of hours each justice allots to his various duties is very important, it is not the principal determinant of wise jurisprudence.

Justice Stewart's statement still holds: "...any poor wretch in any dirty jail in this country can know that he can at least petition the Supreme Court...not some mini-Court that is going to bureaucratize it...The great thing about our Court is that it's not a bureaucracy...not just nine policy makers riding around in Cadillacs." To gain its place in history, the Freund Committee will have to prove that a transfer of responsibility in the Federal judicial system will not isolate the Supreme Court from those submerged in prisons who presently expect that, if only for 15 seconds, the highest court in the land will heed their appeals.