Abstract

Editorials

This article focuses on various political developments in the U.S. The U.S. Administration has given the American people dramatic reply to the question, "what are we fighting for?" According to the long awaited report of the National Resources Planning Board, the fight is for an America in which every citizen shall have "the right to work usefully and creatively, the right to fair pay, the right to adequate food, clothing, shelter, and medical care." This new Bill of American Rights might well serve as a statement of the war aims of the United Nations. One of the oldest and most vicious abuses of civil rights is the police practice of arresting persons and holding them incomunicado, without counsel, until incriminating statements are extorted. Used time and again against labor and political minorities, illegal secret detention and inquisition have been denounced by the Wickersham Commission, by bar associations, and by civic committees, incomunicado detention has featured nearly every civil-liberties case of the last two decades. Now the U.S. Supreme Court, in two decisions, has read police and prosecutors a badly needed lesson on lawless enforcement of the law.