The Supreme Court: Out of Legal Limbo

In 1964, the usually enlightened cam pus town of Chapel Hill, N.C., jailed scores of faculty and students for trying to desegregate local public accommodations. To keep the demonstrators quiet, Solicitor (Prosecutor) Thomas Cooper used a ploy of keeping them in a kind of legal limbo by indefinitely postponing their trials. Last week the Supreme Court voided the ploy, and in the process made history: for the first time, the court extended the Sixth Amendment right of speedy trial to all American courts.

The case involved Zoologist Peter H.

Klopfer, 36, of nearby Duke University, who had joined several other professors...

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