Newspapers / Jones County Journal (Trenton, … / Nov. 19, 1970, edition 1 / Page 2
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EDITORIALS Haver Forget That These Editorials Are The Opinion Of One Man _____And He May Be Wrong Fanning The Flames In the tense and unhappy situation our public schools have been forced there is nothing more certain than an ultimate explosion of frightening pro portions if ^chool officials do not face their responsibility with courage and quit fanning the smoldering embers of racial animosity. Since school 'began this fall two inci dents have arisen: one in the city school system and the most recent in the coun ty schools, and in each school officials took the blind attitude that if they look ed in the other direction the problem would just go away. ^ In the first incident an assistant prin cipal (white) slugged a colored student after the student had cut him on the arm. The principal resigned, which is exactly what he should have done, if he lacked the ability to control his tem per. Permanent expulsion of the student and criminal indictment for the cutting of the principal were exactly what should have happened to the student. But, of course, this did not happen. Now last week a colored teacher in the county system has beaten a white girl with a stick. School officials tried to smother this affair, rather than firing him summarily for such a blindly stupid act. ~ ' Any teacher who is not aware of the' potential explosiveness of the school sit uation should not be permitted to remain in the system, and for any teacher to cross the color line and the sex line and begin beating on a student is the absolute most dangerous act that could take place in these schools. Under no dwumatance should a teach er be cafled upon, much less to they ipisbenave. Tiie unruly child should be disciplin ed by its parents, and if/the'parents either refuse or try and then fail to bring their child under control then school authorities should simply exert their authority by permanently expelling any such child. But blows struck by either teacher or student in anger, or in calm disci pline, arewrong, add dangerous and should never be tolerated by any school system. Union Help? Some unions have a most unusual way of representing the working man. Consider: In 1929 there were 18 daily newspapers in New York City. Today only three survive because of unreason able demends made by the unions which purport to represent the trades needed to run a newspaper. What’s more one of the three surviving New York City dailies is now under union attack so the net result in the very near future may be just two daily newspaper where not so very long ago there were 18. We do not have comparative figures but it is easy to see that a lot of news paper jdbs have gone up in smoke as strike after strike broke either the pock etbook or the will power of the people who ran these now departed newspapers. This is terrible in the netyloss of jobs for men who had well paying jobs, but perhaps even worse than the loss of a,few thousand jobs is the concentration of power in the hands of so few news paper men. four surprise that the judges e lawyers are making two rec ommendations that all judges in North Carolina — like all federal judges — be appointed for life, and of course, that nobody but a lawyer could hold such an. fexalted position. We do not' heed to remind anybody in this area of what appointed judges can do. All we have to do is look at the mess John Lankins and Algernon Butler have made out of so many school systems. If you want a more recent example take a look at what appointed State Superior Court Judge William Copeland did here in Lenoir County during the past two weeks. He is not an elected judge, but gets his high priced job as the result of havjng been twice appointed to four-year terms by first Governor Dan Moore and more re cently by Governor Bob Scott. The only person in the world such ap pointed judges have to please is the people who appoint them. , Instead of going in this direction, our feeling is that we ought to go in the exact opposite direction, let’s make all federal judges elective rather than ap pointed for life; let’s eliminate these ap pointed special superior court judges in our state judicial - system, let’s make superior court judges come up for elec tion more frequently than they do now. It’s hard to believe that there’s a job more important than that of president of these United States and the president has to be elected every four years — and more important than that the presi dent is limited to two terms in office while judges can stay in office until they can’t chew clabber and until they can’t count to ten with their shoes on. of view have been silenced and New Yorkers are exposed to less controversy in their news and editorial diet than we hicks out here in the sticks. We generally have a big city daily, our home town daily, a county weekly and two or three radio and television opinions to challenge our thinking. But, this is natural in one sense. The Cliff dwellers of New York City in spite of their effort to appear so world wise have ^always been and always will be the most provincial collection of narrow minded yokels in the country. A large percent of them think the sun rises out of Long Island Sound and sets in the Hudson River andthatds the be ginning and the end of the world. Of course it is the beginning and ending of THEIR world, but it is a strange world that actually has very little to do with the real America that is made of thous ands of tiny towns and villages scattered like jewels across the broad sweep of our land. JONBSCOUNTY JOURNAL Jack Rlma, Publisher mate the rotation system which keeps the trial judge far from the people who put him in office. In North Carolina each superior court judge only serves six months out of each, four years in his home district. The theory behind that (practice is fine, but in practice it works against rather than . for a better system of justice. The purpose of courts is to equitably decide issues that arise between in dividuals and between individuals and the government Justice to be just has to treat each individual and each issue with equity under the law. Sometimes the law itself creates inequities, but it is not the right of the trial court to at tempt to correct statutory inequities, but to accept the law ahd let the deciding of - constitutional issues of equity be de cided at the appelate level. Yet a great many trial court judges eat their hearts out in a desperate effort to anticipate appellate decisions or to> prostrate themselves under the now tot ally disregarded principle of “stare de cisis”, which converted to the language of everyday usage means to continue running things on the basis of previous decisions by those appellate courts. Ob viously this has become impossible since there are no distinguishing landmarks by which the trial court can guide its actions. What was the law yesterday is not the law today and what’s said to bo the nde of law today will very likely not be the law tomorrow. But it is the duly to his community and to the common sense of the law of each trial judge to live within the bor ders of acceptable compromise. We have recently seen what disrespect the courts have fallen into when every at tenton is paid to the most minute hair splitting of legal interpretations while no thought is given to common sense and the most basic issue of whether a de fendant Is guilty or innocent. By bring ing trial judges home for a much larger period of their tenure to serve the peo ple who put them in office we would automatically have judges assigning dif ferent priorities to fine legaTpoints and to common sense. ^ Thifc lack of recognizable landmarks has imposed , upon the trial judge the most terrible responsibility be has ever bad to suffer. Now he has almost un restricted power to wheel and deal how ever he wishes, because the wildest de cision he may make might be upheld by appellate courts, while the most proper and logical and legal interpretation that he might make may and frequently has been tossed aside' by the activism that has infected the highest court of the land in recent times.
Jones County Journal (Trenton, N.C.)
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Nov. 19, 1970, edition 1
2
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