The Nation: Now, the Nixon Court and What It Means

WHEN Richard Nixon campaigned for the presidency, he charged that Justices on the Supreme Court's liberal majority were letting their personal social philosophy affect their interpretation of the Constitution. Given the independence of the judiciary, the attack seemed merely a sharp—and perhaps popular—political debating point. Yet the court's independence hangs in part on the vicissitudes of health among its members. Last week Justice John Marshall Harlan, 72, resigned because of severe illness only six days after the resignation of Justice Hugo L. Black, 85, who died last week in Bethesda Naval Hospital...

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