Of all the disputed internal-security decisions laid down by the Supreme Court in 1956-57, none stirred up more wrath than the Jencks case ruling. Its gist: a defendant in a federal criminal case had a legal right to examine pretrial statements of Government witnesses. Warned Justice Tom Clark in his dissent: the decision granted criminals a "Roman holiday for rummaging" in FBI files.
Last week, continuing its trend toward narrowing the internal-security decisions
(TIME, June 22), the Supreme Court called off the holiday by rejecting seven appeals based on the Jencks ruling. Written by Justice Felix Frankfurter (joined by Tom Clark,...