What do a Brooklyn gambler, a Manhattan cop, a Harlem politician, the mother of Massachusetts' Governor and hundreds of civil rights workers from Florida to Mississippi have in common? Answer: all are trying to remove the various criminal charges against them from state to federal courts. They are caught up in a headlong trend that intrigues lawyers, alarms judges, and is certain soon to confront the Supreme Court with some of the thorniest state-federal conflicts in U.S. legal history.
Rightly or wrongly, many lawyers regard federal courts as fairer than state courts....