Wild justice Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Wild justice - Term Paper Example The then President, John Kennedy, appointed him the Justice of the Supreme Court on 1963 May. Goldberg considered capital punishment a bad public policy as it could never prevent criminal crimes. He asserted that death penalty levied mainly on specific groups of the society such as the poor, the politically powerless and to some extent, the innocent by misjudgments. Another issue that arose was the fact that most of those affected by the death penalty, were the blacks leading to a racial prejudice. He resolved to end capital punishment starting from the courts as a Supreme Court Justice. According to A Wild Justice (28), the Justice Arthur Goldberg dissected from a decision from the Supreme Court not to hear the death penalty appeal involving Frank Lee Rudolph verses a white woman from Alabama. Rudolph was a black man who had a death penalty for raping a white woman from Alabama. This issue clearly heightened, given the fact that it regarded racism. The then Chief Justice, Earl Warre n, feared taking on the issue as Justice Goldberg and his clerk Dershowitz had already written an extensive memorandum that detailed all the cases of racial discrimination in capital punishments. Goldberg knew it would become very necessary to get as much support as possible for his decent. While keeping a low profile, Goldberg used his clerk, Deshowtz to send his memo about his dissect to various organizations including the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (A Wild Justice, 30). The news about Goldberg’s dissection from the Supreme Court’s decision circulated to a suite of offices on the twentieth floor of 10 Columbus Circle in Midtown Manhattan in early November. This was a home to the most important law firm in America, and simply implied that the information was to be in the reach of public consumption. The New York Times wrote about his dissect immediately and praised him terming the move as raising â€Å"a potential far reaching idea† (A Wild Justice, 34). The Nati onal Association for the Advancement of the Colored People Legal Defense Fund was a very successful organization since its formation. It had several legal victories that clearly meant that the Goldberg’s dissect issue could get a serious back up. LDF was a supportive organization about issues that affected the social linings of American Citizens. Lawyers of LDF had won several cases in various social issues. In 1944, LDF lawyers won the Smith vs. Allwright case, in which a decision was made requiring Texas to allow the African Americans to vote in primary elections (A Wild Justice, 32). The support that LDF gave to these social classes was in conjunction with the core role of the organization, that is, to give equal rights to all Americans regardless of race or social status The role of LDF was also manifested in the Morgan verses Virginia case. This 1946 case involved desegregation of interstate buses and the LDF lawyers won. Most Africans had commonly been discriminated in terms of service in state offices. Several movements to avert these social issues had already sprung up and LDF played a major role in the support for this movements. LDF managed to secure victory in a case protecting the African Americans to serve on juries and allowed African Americans to be involved in real estate business and property ownership. The LDF’s lawyers also help in the more serious case involving Martin Luther King, Jr, in which charges of contempt followed his protest of Birmingham segregation. The arguments raised by the LDF’s lawyers enabled the Supreme Court to drop all the charges that stemmed from all the civil rights sit-ins. All of this success made people to believe the power of LDF to be limitless (A Wild Justice, 32). The issue of Goldberg dissection arrived at the LDF and they immediately