Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1970

Publication Information

46 Notre Dame L. 55 (1970-1971)

Abstract

On January 23, 1970, the Senate passed by the overwhelming vote of 73 to 1, S. 30, the Organized Crime Control Act of 1969. During the debate in the Senate, S. 30 was subjected to indiscriminate charges that it would, in the words of the American Civil Liberties Union, "make drastic incursions on civil liberties" and that it ran "counter to the letter and spirit of the Constitution."

Certain newspaper commentators and a prominent mayor have echoed those charges, and recently a report critical of several key titles of S. 30 was published by the Committee on Federal Legislation of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. The committee, like the Civil Liberties Union, based its criticism of S. 30 largely on supposed principles of civil liberties.

The purpose of this article is to set the record straight concerning the implications of S. 30, as it passed the Senate, for fundamental civil liberties and our treasured Bill of Rights.

Comments

Reprinted with permission of the Notre Dame Law Review.

Included in

Criminal Law Commons

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