ustxtxb_obs_1959_10_02_50_00004-00000_000.pdf

Let those flatter who fear, it is not an American art. JEFFERSON jam ea `Come, Let Us Reason Together’ $ Th-ry, _er ,. 1 A AN Bartlett Appears Exclusively in the Texas Observer ROBES FOR JUDGES The death of a great governor, like the death of a great president, moves us to think on our country, how it is fine, and brings forth and uses its fine people. Jimmy Allred has not been put into many of the books that teach our students their heritage in Texas ; he was too lately successful for the many who are forgetful at the expense of the few who remember. But he lived among us, and he was one of ours. We arc reassured about our genuine attributes as .a people and a _nation, first, that men ‘come forward from among us who are brave, devoted, and unorthodox, Jefferson, Jackson, and Lincoln, Houston, Hogg-, and Allred, and second, that these men reflect, as they refract, the impulses which hold us together as a people, personal freedom, popular faith, and the righteous fight. Perhaps it is better to have lived in such a man’s time, even for those who, after he had done his main work, betrayed it, perhaps it is better simply to have been among, those -who knew he had clone the main work and was living still as a judge in Corpus Christi,, than it will be for those who must sense him from the books he will take his place” in. People would speak of how lie drank coffee in a coffee shop each morning in Corpus, and it was strange, almost wasteful, for he who was so much to the people he lived among to live in any particular way in any particular place. For he, James Allred, did enough for us all, in his time, which chose to use him, and found him true, that we gave to him that highest compliment we have in our power and wisely mostly withhold, our love of the ideal. 5wo 5avorile Sono? We, too, have heard the growing talk that Texas should put forth Senator Yarborough as a favorite son candidate for vice-president in 1960, and it’s not a bad idea. Two favorite sons from one state would hardly be taken as a total victory for Senator Johnson. We keep hearing, from Johnson people or Johnson apologists, that lie can’t get the nomination, so why fight him? By this argument, extended, Yarborough, who has . attracted enthusiastic accolades from U.S. liberal Democrats, really has a much better chance of getting on the ticket, so why not make him a favorite son? “Would this be a good way the liberal Democrats of Texas could tell the national party they do not buy Johnson’s “moderation” and Eisenhower halfwayism? It would not preclude movements for other candidates for president, such as the Stevenson-for-President group that has been formed in Texas. It would not preclude. free speech in 1960. Much would depend on the instructions of the delegation to Los Angeles. 13tit Yarborough people could go to the state convention as Yarborough people and do their best for him, just as Johnson people would be concentrating on their man. Would Yarborough assent? Judging from the recent reports from Washington, some of his closest friends’ are booming the idea. And we also know that Yarborough has taken steps, within the last Month, which might have been designed to mitigate his principal weakness as a vice presidential candidate, his Southern background vis-a-vis civil rights. On Sept. 12 Yarborough not only resoundingly endorsed, in. a Senate floor speech, the abolition of the Published by Texas Observer Co., Ltd. Entered as second-class matter, April 26, 1937, at the Post Office at Austin, Texas, under the Act of March 3, 1879. OCTOBER 2, 1959 Ronnie Dugger Editor and General Manager Larry Goodwyn, Associate Editor Sarah Payne, Office Manager Published once a week from Austin, Texas. Delivered postage prepaid $4 per annum. Advertising rates available on request. Extra copies 10c each. Quantity micas available on orders. poll tax by a federal constitutional amendment, he simultaneously placed into the Congressional Record, with the hesitant remark that it “has a section on the history of the right to vote in America,” an editorial from the Washington Post in which was said, of the Civil Rights Commission: “The Commission has, of course, uncovered many unpleasant facts about discrimination in voting, in housing, and in education. This was its special assignment. On the basis of these facts, local and state governments as well as Cono -ress and the administration should be able to correct many injustices that are a reproach to our democratic system.” Senator Yarborough is a .careful politician on civil rights, and knew what he was doing. Then, this Sunday, he spoke to the American ‘Jewish Committee in Houston. Consider these remarks he made, contained in the distributed copy of his speech; “The recognition of human dignity entails the acceptance of the political principle of equality.” “He who is equal is not dominated, but free to go his own way, to develop his own qualities, to attain his own goals, so long as’ he is not infringing on the rights of others.” “Prejudice, racial, religious, and national, is surely one of the most harmful elements to be found in our society today. I believe one of the most hopeful phenomena of our time is the way this unthinking, emotional approach is being countered, through the efforts of such organizations as the AMerican Jewish Committee, by a scientific and intellectual study of the causes of the rise and growth of prejudice, based upon tabulated facts, and con 7 EDITORIAL and BUSINESS OFFICE: 504 West 24th St., Austin, Texas. Phone GReenwood 7-0746. HOUSTON OFFICE: 1010 Dennis, Mrs. R. D. Randolph. We will serve no group or party but will heW hard to the truth as we find it and the right as we see it. We are dedicated to the whole truth, to human values above all interests, to the rights of man as the foundation of democracy; we will take orders from none but our own conscience, and never will we overlook or misrepresent the truth to serve the interests of the powerful or cater to the ignoble in the human spirit. \(A Dallas judge recently proposed that judges in Texas should wear robes. The board of directors of the San Antonio Bar Assn. has voted that judges of state and county courts in Bexar County wear robes starting Jan. 1. Charles J. Lieck, Sr., chairman of the association’s committee handling this subject, explained that the robes would “lend considerable dignity to the courts so far as the spectators are concerned, as well as to the general public.” Counsel Jones MARSHALL The time for the Texas Supreme Court to enter its new quarters approaches. The judicial branch of government will not make the journey, from the Capitol building to the court building on elephants, as the late Mr. Justice Holmes indicated might have been in keeping with the splendor of the appointments of the new federal quarters, when removal of the U.S. Supreme Court from the national Capitol took place. Yet there are indications that something comparable is in the wind. Mind you, the court itself has not, to the knowledge of the writer, evidenced a desire to be robed ; but some in the legal profession are insisting that our citizen judges Ice measured for the trappings of the seventeenth century, and hold forth in their new buildings in the black silk garb of a maiden aunt. The pitch for this return to royalty and priestcraft is that it will give dignity to the court and engender a ducted with logical clarity. This kind of study is helpful for individuals, for groups, and for nations,” Senator Yarborough said. A long way from Nacogdoches! and we rejoice. So will all of Senator Yarborough’s friends who have regretted the hobbles of a dying social past upon him. Liberal Democrats certainly will want to consider the possible effects of a Yarborough vice-presidential nomination on a losing national ticket upon Texas affairs. They will want to Weigh Yarborough, as a real candidate, against other U.S. Democrats who might be nominated on a liberal ticket. They will want to weigh alternative ways of combatting Johnson’s enervating influence on liberalism in America. All very intrigneing. respect for it that some of its unwitting detractors think it does not presently possess. Before it becomes a matter of contempt, let the writer say that he gazed upon the robed “luds” of the English bench, and that far from feeling a sense. of awe and respect, he had to exert heroic effort to keep the profane muscles of his face from producing a snicker. if not a loud guffaw. So it should be with retains any degree of perspective. But, robes we shall likely have, and a glance backward and forward on the subject may he in order before courts and lawyers succumb. No DIRECT EVIDENCE that the judicial robe has an ecclesiastical origin exists; yet it seems highly probable that our early bench warmers were not slow to realize the power of the church, and, that any accidental connection that might be made between the divine pronouncement of the throne and the current holy men and their decrees would not work them any great harm. Indeed it might even add to their dignity. Most certainly, robes were the trappings that the papal household early grasped to distinguish their own, and sd with members of the royal court, lords, barons, knights, and so on. History is replete with instances of an extremely inferior person being palmed off as something else beneath the protective covering and coloring of a robe. Our court robing can’t go back to the colonial judges and their scarlet garb. Even the Tories of 1789 would have feared that, and our modern liberty-leaguers, states’ righters, and like gentry of the far right suggest it not. Our tradition, then, centers on the first chief justice of the U.S., John Jay, who likely found so little to do in office that he robed through sheer boredom. But robe he did, not ecclesiatically, but in the academic tradition. Some college had conferred some honor or degree upon him, arid lie sat judicially in the discomfort of the trappings of the past honor. Now, the writer can’t remember a great deal that Mr. Justice Jay decreed in his robe that could favorably compare with the opinions of Hemphill, Wheeler, Lipscomb, and other great. judges of the early days of the Texas Supreme Court. And to think of it, in the opinion of the robers, these Texas judges wrote in the THE TEXAS OBSERVER