News Scrapbook 1986-1988

San Diego, CA (San Diego Co.) Dally Transcript (Cir. D. 7,415)

San Diego, CA (San Diego C~-) San Diego Union (Cir. o. 217,089) (Cir. S. 341 ,840)

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Scholar Urges Supr me Court Research Service

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cholar urges ')-"4 ~s advice bank for Supreme Court By Lorie Hearn, Staff Writer Legal scholar Kenneth Culp Davis smiles knowingly when he talks about how to right what's wrong with the U.S. Supreme Court. "I have a long list of cases ... in which factual material available to the court was tnadequate," Davis said. "It is not too strong to say that some of their decisions rest on ignorance." Davis' sweeping criticism is backed bv mor than a half-century of resear d a n on I reputation in administrative a . ul hi:; so u- lon - to equip the court with a bank of scientif- ic experts - promises to be controversial in a field of professionals who are slow to buck tradi- tion. His plan is to make available to the court the same kind of expertise in the economy, social sciences and medicine that is available to legis- lative agencies and to Congress through the Con- gressional Research Service. The outside advice would be passed on to lawyers arguing complex cases to preserve the adversary process. Davi \eiled his proposal last night to about 100 members of the legal community at the Uni-

FRIDAY MAY1 19

SAN DIEGO DAILY TRANSCRIPT

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U.S. S preme Court- IContm, r P11,:e I Al Court has created some of ,ts most important social law without a firm ba i in "legislative facts," which he d!'fines as "the fact that hcur on th!' court's choices about law n

question came up today no one would need medical evidence that all brains are the same size and the size of a brain has nothing to do with intelligence. But at that time people would say everyone knows it's true. "Policy questions like this often rest on factual understanding." He noted the precedental Miranda v. Arizona case was decided, not on the basis of clear facts on police practices of inter rogation, but on loose impressions. Other factual questions that could 811 in S reme Court cases, he said, might concern whether a product causes cancer in humans if it does in mice. Or whether a psychiatrist can predict unerringly a criminal defendant's '·future dangerousness." "Should we have an institutional arrangement that would assurt our Justices have access to the kind of facts, studies and science needed in order to resolve policy questions soundly? That's the question I'm raising." Davis, a wiry, tan, 79 who boasts he can still beat half his racquet- ball opponents, has been pondering that question for some 40 years.· He smd the idea of a Supreme Court research arm came to him as a second-year law student at Har- vard, where he graduated in 1934. "l first published the suggestion in 1942, in Vol. 55 of the Harvarr Law Review," he recalled. "I woul guess I've published it 46 time since then. I'm writing all the time Teaching is secondary for me. "l wrote 27 volumes and more than 100 articles over the last 41i,. years and this subJect permeates a large po ion of that." Asked why the research service hasn't yet been developed, after all this time, Davis replied with a mixture of philosophy and defen- sive evasion. "There are a lot of good ideas in the world Why didn't we have them ooner? We have evolving in- stitutitions, each one in its own stage of development. If we look back 100 years from now we will see things done that should have been done before. "You don't have a pressure group whose interests are at stake. If the court wants it, what are the motivations for them departing from legal traditions begun in the 12th century? "The caseload of the court is enormous. It's a very difficultjob- they all work beyond their capaci- ty. They don't have time to pick up extraneous subjects like this that affect the court. "If they are reluctant to stir up something that pertains to them, it doesn't mean they have a convic- tion that it shouldn't be stirred up. They think they'll do it next year." He said expanding Congress' re- search staff would be expensive, noting its 1986 budget was $39 million. Davis insisted, though, that° all nine justices support his research service idea. He said he's talked to some, including Antonin Scalia, whom he described as a friend, Thurgood Marshall and Byron White.

Davis' propo al followed one he'd out in d y ar ago in a Minnesota Law Review monograph entitled, "Judicial, Legislative and Admin 1 tr ,Live Lawmaking: A Proposed Rr e.irrh • erv1ce for he upreme Court" In th monogr ph, and in an in- terview bt•fore hi evening speech, Dav, cited a few examples of high court dcc1s10n~ made in a near vacuum ff ct . In 190 , h noted, the court 1,allc,wed the Kentucky attorney gen rut to file a brief as erting the brain of blacks wer maller than th e of white~. The court upheld a tat I w forbidding white and bl ck c 11 udents- to be taught in theimmecl room. "Tod, y, everybody knows that's bunk," aid Davis. "Th05e ju tices 111 y h \ taken it seriously If the

The San Diego Umon/S!a Honda

SD law professor Kenneth Davis 1pping the U.S. Supreme

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Court with a panel of scientifi

See EXPERTS on Page B-8

suggests

other experts.

e all uncomfortable when cciding cases and we're fr nted with a situation where really don't know what the ~quences are of which way we .. Sneed said. "But then, fre- q tly, no one does. That's where o reach deeply mto your i me - o. t feelings and come up wit toe way 1t ought to go. And that's all you can do. And then you watch." Correcting Ml1t • kea Legislators can correct a Judge's mistakes, he added. "Society has a way of correcting these things," Sneed said. "The courts don't have the last word unless they are accepted by the people." Davis, though, says his concept of.arming jurists with the best and most complete information availa- ble has a solid basis in legal history. In 18th-Century England, he sa1d. Lord Mansfield developed the outlines of modern Anglo-Ameri- can commercial law by sitting in pubs and talking with merchants about how they conducted busi- nesQ. In n.e early 1900s, Louis Brandeis-then a Boston lawyer and 1ater a legendary Supreme Court Justice-submitted a factual brief that became the basis of a landmark decision givmg states the power to limit the length of the workday. Now, parties sometimes file such "Brandeis briefs" to give the Su- preme Court t.ecnnical information in a case. But such occasions are rare, Davis said. The gray-haired professor-who taught at the universities of Texas, Minnesota and Chicago before join- ing the USO faculty in 1976-un- derstands that his proposal may not win quick acceptance. But he can afford to be patient. Fifty years ago, when he was a second-year student at Harvard Law S<..nool, one of his profes- sors-an eminent specialist-re- jected Davis' notions about the nature of evidence in legal cases. Today, the professor's ideas have been relegated to the ash heap, and Davis' are ei:nbedded in the federal rules of evidence. re

San Diego, CA (San Diego Co.) Even ing Tribune (Cir. D. 127,454)

San Diego, CA (San Diego Co.) Evening Tribune (Cir. D. 127,454)

_MA_Y_5_ 1987

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p ARTY LINE: George Mitro- vich had called the same man in Denver regularly for years be- fore his Denver friend surprised him: "I sure hope you're using our 800 number." ... The tele- phone answering machine at Sierra Club headquarters rn L.A. offers a recorded apology: "We're sorry we missed your call .. . We're out saving the world." .. . On a musical hold after he called Paris-Frederick Mortuary, Floyd Thomas heard a lilting voice sing, "I'll have my whole life to spend with you ... " SCHOOL NEWS: llSD a...nd SDSU are teaming to help Amer• ican companies gain a competi- tive edge over Japane. e mpa- nies. The schools' extension divi- sions are launching an Institute of Quality and Productivity. . .. Eighty percent of the nation's law schools report declining ap- plications for fall. Not in San Diego. \JSD La~chool bas Z,325 applications so far - up 200 over last year. And at Cal Western, where Mike Dessent is marking his first anniversary as dean, Z,700 have applied, up 1,500 over last year's total. QUOTABLE: "San Diegans are second only to the people of A~- lantis in having access to their waterfront." - Port Director Don Nay. THE NAMES: Paul Krueger had a San Diego omelet (with onions, ham, peppers and toma- toes) in Manhattan at a restau- rant called Jackson Hole. . ..

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< " EX CLI IC ON CAMPUS: YES OR O?" Thats the utl or a d ·bate on the controversial topic of whether high .,c ool campus health chn1c should di.spen contracegtives. The dis- cu ion will tart at 7 pm Monday at the Unfv !]ity-Dl,San Diego's new Unive ily Center. Panelists will include San Diego city chools Supermt ndent Tom Payzant; Dr. Jacqueline Par- th more, chief of taff at Veterans Administration Hospital; the R v Dougla · Regin, director of Catholic Community Services; and Joan Patton. orgamzer of Coalit10n for Family Values. The d bale is a cla ptoJect for graduate students in the USO ·hool of £-:duca ion. Former Mayor Roger Hedgecock will be mod rator. - Joseph besken, taff writer _zq.5 y

(Ne1i assign- TRASH TRUCKIN': Mayor O'Connor is about to take on a challenge made six months ago by a crew of city employees. On Thursday, she'll spend the morn- ing in overalls, riding on a dump truck with city garbage collec- tors, hauling trash. MUSIC: Efforts to revive the Symphony are failing. Dr. Wil- liam McGill has scratched a pro- posed series of luncheons to raise money for a 1987-88 season: "When I went out testing the wa- ters among some of those we planned to invite, I ran into a lot of opposition because of the cred- ibility problem with the Sympho- ny." TI:e ,Symphony's self-im- posed deadline for raising 2 mil- lion it needs for a winter season is 10 days away. CITY BEAT: Korea's Hyundai and two Japanese automakers are negotiating with the port to switch their U.S. port of entry from Los Angeles/Long Beach to San Diego.... Governors of 470 Rotary districts in 161 nations convene at Hotel Inter-Continen- tal in spring 1989. Despite the Su- preme Court's ruling yesterday, it could be an all-male gathering. All district governors are past presidents of Rotary clubs. CITY SCENES: Bob Hawkins is the first to find a mistake on Sea World's huge walk-around map. The big i land in the Niagara River, just ab ve t e falls, is des- ignated Goat Island. Hawkins knows it's Grand Island; he summered there as a youngster. (There is a Goat Island in British Columbia.) ... For a Press Club spoof of Dennis Conner on Thurs- day night, Cubic's Jerry Ringer will portray Malin Burnham - plotting the America's Cup de- fense off Pump Station 64, so that we win by default. ... The execu- tive urinals at PSA headquarters have bull's-eyes. ment.)

El Cajon, CA (San Diego Co.) Dally Calllornlan (Cir. D. 100,271)

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P C. B I XSR Pros a d cons of growth control to be argued o and cons of growth controls will be argued by Umwr:.it)l. an D1 o law profe sors Richard "Corky" Wharton Hugh Fne man at 4 p.m. Wednesday, Muy 13. at the Umver ity of San Die'70 The 90-minute debate will be patterned ufter "The Advocates, 'a public television forum in which experts d bate both sides of an i sue. Wharton. who will argue for growth control . plans to call as "witnesses" Lynn Benn, chairman of the county's Community Planning Committee. and Dwight Worden, form r Del Mar city attorney and an advocate for tightly managed growth. Friedman, who will argue against con(rols, w_ill call former an Diego Councilman Fred Schnaubelt, who 1s now m real estate dev lopment, and Kim Kilkenny. n legi !alive analyst for the San Diego onstruction Industry Federauon The U D forum is free and open to the public. Seating is limited / t

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"So often, true ideas like this have to be kicked around for decades," Davis said. "Then, after, they've been adopted, people say, 'How could we have been without this for so long?' "

Atty. Carlos Batara is wearing shorts to work, with a full-leg cast. It's fallout from the down- town Y's noontime basketball bash. . . . Remember Charlie of the old Charlie & Harrigan team? His real name is Jack Woods, and he's running a radio station in Ventura. Its call letters h::ive a bomeoow• r.:-.,;: moo. /

San Diego, CA (San Diego Co.) San Diego Union (Cir. D. 217,089) (Cir. S. 341 ,840) MAY 2 1

San Diego, CA (San Diego Co.) Daily Transcript (Cir. D. 7,415)

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ball our runs in the 1ghth inmng y t rday but lost to v • tin Loyola Marymoun~ 9-7, m a W t Coa! t Athl t c Conf r nc game Travis Tarch1one's RBI double off reliever Jim W tlund in the ninth won it for th I.ion. (33-19-1, 7,10-1). Tarchione ~!so had two-run ham run in the ond Dave Roll w· 3-for-3 with two RBI and Andy Robert was 4-for-6 for USO (29-20.1, 6-ll•I). D,1rryl Scott (8-5) won, and Dan Newman (2-6) lost Th teams will pl y a double-h ad- r at USD today at noon. rn ore

/ Edwin Meese talks about drugs and corporate crime when he sw- ings into town Wednesday. He ad- dresses USO Corporate Associates at a private hriich, then the law school's Board of Visitors/1,of which he is a member. ;2_ 15'§ * * *