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The U. S. Supreme Court has also ap-
plied the Eighth Amendment which is a
prohibition against cruel and unusual pun-
ishment, but it has not related all of the
eight amendments. It has specifically re-
fused to hold certain parts of the Fifth
Amendment as being applicable to state
action, and it has specifically provided that
such things as trial by jury in both civil
and criminal cases are a matter of state
action and are not matters covered by the
Fourteenth Amendment. There may come
a time, and I suspect there will come a
time when these, too, will be brought under
the umbrella of the Fourteenth Amend-
ment and applied to all state action.
In the areas of segregation and racial
discrimination, the Court has broadened the
impact of the Fourteenth Amendment un-
til people feel it covers completely all ques-
tions with respect to racial discrimination
in the public area.
Now, on what basis has the court done
this? I will not try to get into this except
to say that, in the words otr Justice Frank-
furter, the court must consider each situa-
tion to see if it "offends those canons of
decency and fairness which express the
notions of justice of English-speaking
people."
Ladies and gentlemen, you may not like
this, but this is the life we live today, and
the Supreme Court's rulings with respect
to these areas are controlling upon this
State and every state. Consequently the
thoughts we have and actions we take with
respect to the framing of personal rights
must not ignore the effect of the Supreme
Court rulings in connection with the appli-
cation of the United States Bill of Rights
to our own state situation.
As a matter of fact, within the last year,
more than twenty-five cases have been de-
cided by the Supreme Court on the basis of
the application of the Fourteenth Amend-
ment into such areas as freedom of speech,
freedom of the press, criminal application,
segregation, and freedom of religion.
A very recent case voided the Virginia
anti-miscegenation clause, which of course
applied to Maryland, too.
Also, just the other day you may have
seen in the newspaper that the Court has
agreed to bear a case involving open hous-
ing in a suburban area. I think it is in
Missouri.
In any event, we are in an era of con-
stant change, but where the same funda-
mental basic concepts of personal free-
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dom still exist. Therefore, what we are
presenting to you, ladies and gentlemen,
and what I think you will find, are the
same stalwart statements of personal
rights, personal liberties that have been
maintained through the years and have
been not diminished but expanded by ac-
tions of the Supreme Court.
Now, with that very brief and certainly
unlearned discussion, I want to tell you
just a little bit about this Committee. I am
frank to say that when we first gathered,
and you saw what a fine bunch of people
they are, we were strangers who sat down
and looked at each other. I am not at all
sure that we were not like a bunch of
male cats out in the alley during mating
season, but we soon got to the point where
after discussion, hearings and debates we
realized that we were a lot closer together
in much of our thinking than we had first
thought we might be.
We received, as you well know, 123 pro-
posals. I guess we were the disposal for
the proposals, and we certainly had them.
We talked to and heard from more than
100 witnesses ranging everywhere from
constitutional lav/ experts down to people
who were dedicated espousers of some par-
ticular peculiar idea. We had constitutional
lawyers, I want you to know, who were
experts on the Fourteenth Amendment or
on the First Amendment. These fellows are
like doctors, you know. They specialize not
only on the Bill of Rights, but on certain
aspects of the Bill of Rights, and this is
why none of us on this Committee can hope
or claim to have any great expertise.
We have books and libraries on this sub-
ject. We can simply give you these con-
cepts and these pictures, and hope that
when we finish you will have caught the
spirit that 1 think permeated this Com-
mittee, and adopt these Recommendations
without too much difficulty. I hope that
by this time, the compulsive amenders have
worn themselves out and that you will find
little in this that will need much doctoring.
No\v, having heard all these proposals,
having seen and talked to these witnesses
and having debated among ourselves, we
adopted several basic concepts, and these
1 hope you will bear in mind v/hen you
consider and go over the Recommendation
R&P-1 of this Committee.
The first is set forth in the memorandum,
and states very well our concept that the
Declaration of Rights should reserve and
declare those personal rights of individuals
which no governmental official, agency, in-
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