According to latest reports, Rhodesian Prime Minister Abel Muzorewa is holding up recognition of the U.S. He is waiting, he told members of the press, for a stable government, backed by the majority of the people.
The relevant opinion in the Supreme Court’s 5 to 4 decision granting trial judges discretion to restrict the access of the press to pretrial hearings seems to be Chief Justice Burger’s. “Even though the draftsmen of the Constitution could not anticipate the twentieth century pretrial proceedings to suppress evidence, pretrial proceedings were not wholly unknown. Written interrogatories were used pretrial in eighteenth century litigation, especially in admiralty cases. … Yet no one ever suggested that there was any ‘right’ of the public to be present at such pretrial proceedings as were available in that time; until the trial it could not be known whether and to what extent the pretrial evidence would be offered or received.” Grand juries, the Chief Justice might also have mentioned, are also secret. The Wall Street Journal complained that if pretrial plea-bargaining was more generally reported, public anger might be mobilized against the practice. Yet public anger remained unmobilized until the present decision, and surely it is not necessary to have access to every pretrial proceeding in order to make a case against plea-bargaining. Then there were those who saw the decision as yet another step in the Burger Court’s (read: the Nixon Court’s) plot to undermine our liberties (read: the press’s liberties). But that’s old news, and quite amply covered.
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