Criminal Justice Quotes
The increase compared to the rest of the world really occurred in the 1980s when The War on Drugs began jailing drug users and dealers and that accounts for the major difference. The 3000 different federal crimes, if an accurate number, is all the more remarkable because in America, the major part of law enforcement is handled by the state and local governments.
There is not much difference between England then and America now.
Kennedy had financed bootlegging operations and had himself been involved in many shady stock deals.
This quotation is a great example of the difficulty of deciding some of the major Constitutional issues. Most reasonable people believe that Rehnquist certainly has a point. On the other hand, critics observe that this quotation essentially says that it is OK to convict an innocent person if it cost too much or be too much trouble to do so. Reasonable people would also agree that this objection has much merit also. So the judicial system is stuck with deciding when the cost or trouble is too much. There will never, can never, be a clear cut answer.
There were anti-Vietnam war protests going on throughout the country that year. In many of them, especially at universities, protesters took over buildings, and shut down operations. Most Republicans and many Democrats wanted the protests to end, mostly because they feared the spread of the anti-Vietnam war sentiment would catch on and become a position held by most Americans (which it did just as they feared,) They were restrained in what they could do legally by the 1st Amendment. However, there was much breaking of minor laws in many of the demonstrations and that was the focus of the effort to suppress the demonstrations. But in the tradition of civil disobedience, it was the lawbreaking that tended to get the press attention and coverage, so the leaders of the anti-war movement advocated even more lawbreaking, hence Dirksen’s statement to the convention.
