Showing papers in "California Law Review in 1968"

Psychedelics and Religious Experience

Abstract: THE EXPERIENCES resulting from the use of psychedelic drugs are often described in religious terms. They are therefore of interest to those like myself who, in the tradition of William James,x are concerned with the psychology of religion. For more than thirty years I have been studying the causes, the consequences, and the conditions of those peculiar states consciousness in which the individual discovers himself to be one continuous process with God, with the Universe, with the Ground of Being, or whatever name he may use by cultural conditioning or personal preference for the ultimate and eternal reality. We have no satisfactory and definitive name for experiences of this kind. The terms "religious experience," "mystical experience," and "cosmic consciousness" are all too vague and comprehensive to denote that specific mode of consciousness which, to those who have known it, is as real and overwhelming as falling in love. This Article describes such states of consciousness as and when induced by psychedelic drugs, although they are virtually indistinguishable from genuine mystical experience. The Article then discusses objections to the use of psychedelic drugs which arise mainly from the opposition between mystical values and the traditional religious and secular values of Western society.

On Legislating Morals: The Symbolic Process of Designating Deviance

Abstract: T IS BY NOW a commonplace of the social sciences to say that one man's moral turpitude is another man's innocent pleasure. Although policing and judicial agencies of our society designate behavior as wrong, immoral, and illegal every day, we are well aware that such designation is by no means either inherent in human nature or common to all societies in all historical periods. Official and legal judgments of deviance show all the characteristics of cultural relativity. What is crime today may well have been goodness yesterday; what is applauded in New York City is decried on the prairies. Legislatures, police agencies, and courts all operate, however, by designating some behavior as deviant, immoral, and unsanctioned. In this Article we are concerned with how such designations or norms, arise, are maintained, and undergo change. Our effort is less to understand the actions of the deviant than to shed light on those who define his behavior as punishable and prohibited. This Article focuses on one kind of deviance designation: "disinterested indignation"--hostility directed against a norm violator despite the absence of direct or personal damage to the norm upholder and designator. The norm upholder's righteous hostility leads him to define the deviant as immoral. Intense legal and public reactions to homosexuals, prostitutes, drug addicts, gamblers, and abortionists represent the outlawing of certain behavior despite the absence of a "victim" or damage to specific and direct interest of others. Political radicalism, murder, theft, and the list of usual crimes may all be interpreted as threats to the life and property of citizens. Designation of the acts mentioned above as "crimes" cannot be explained on the same basis.

The Right to Speak from Times to Time: First Amendment Theory Applied to Libel and Misapplied to Privacy

Abstract: The extent to which men are free to speak without restraint from government is the principal measure of the degree of reality which lies beneath the rhetoric that tells us we are a free people living under a free government. But the very phrase \"free government\" contains a paradox, since a government which is not prepared in some circumstances to apply restraints and thus lessen freedom is no government at all. Democratic theory supposedly resolves this seeming contradiction by legitimizing state power in its restraint on conduct while immunizing from the reach of the state speech and other forms of expression. Every civics student knows that by virtue of the first amendment \"Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press,\" and that by reason of the fourteenth amendment the same restraints are imposed upon state governments. The only thing wrtng with this conventional view of the role of the first amendment in our society is that it is untrue. To be sure, it contains an important element of truth, but it neither is nor can be wholly and literally.true. Some have thought that the first amendment must be interpreted and applied with absolute literalness. Justice Black, who is usually

A Family Court: The California Proposal

Abstract: The idea of a family court has been discussed for many years. Such a court, it is said, should have integrated jurisdiction over all legal problems that involve the members of a family; be presided over by a specialist judge assisted by a professional staff trained in the social and behavioral sciences; and employ its special resources and those of the community to intervene therapeutically in the lives of the people who come before it.' In the United States the idea was apparently stimulated by the optimism resulting from the success of the juvenile court movement in establishing specialized courts to deal with neglected and delinquent children. The nearly religious fervor of juvenile court proponents and their virtually unlimited expectation of the amount of good a judge and his staff of experts might accomplish by treating children therapeutically rather than punitively2 carried over to the

Religious Aspects of Psychedelic Drugs

Abstract: ONE ASPECT of the very controversial "hallucinogenic" or "psychedelic" drugs is whether they generate religious experience, and if so, whether this experience is genuinely religious. This Article examines the available evidence that psychedelic drugs do induce religious experience in hopes that its conclusions might promote rational consideration of legal issues surrounding drugs. Before considering the religious potential of psychedelic drugs, however, one must supply a working definition of "religion." Further, to identify the characteristics of a profoundly religious experience we shall study several historical figures to indicate how a person undergoing such an experience may be expected to feel and act.

The MER/29 Story--An Instance of Succesful Mass Disaster Litigation

Abstract: T a MER/29 STORY is more than an unusual account of the marketing of a prescription drug which injured thousands of users. It is a case history of the legal response to the problems of mass litigation. In particular, it shows how plaintiffs' attorneys banded together voluntarily and without court control to dispose of approximately fifteen hundred civil suits filed by injured drug users who sought aggregate punitive damages by which the defendant manufacturer claimed it would be destroyed. Finally, the story describes how the Food and Drug Administration handled the drug, how the United States Congress investigated it, and how the federal government successfully prosecuted the manufacturer for submitting false data. Part I of this Article presents the scientific and economic background of the marketing of MER/29. Part II deals with the organization of the litigation and the role of the plaintiffs' group. The disposition of the litigation is covered in Part III, and the last Part considers the implications of the litigation to the legal profession, to other interested groups, and to the public.

The Establishment Clause and Aid to Parochial Schools

Abstract: N 1947, MR. JUSTicE RUTLEDGE found \"[t]wo great drives ...constantly in motion to abridge... the complete division of religion and civil authority which our forefathers made. One is to introduce religious education and observances into the public schools. The other, to obtain public funds for the aid and support of various private religious schools.\"1 Everson v. Board of Education, the occasion for his observation, was the first significant decision of the Supreme Court in current history interpreting the establishment clause of the first amendment. Involving bussing of children to parochial schools, it concerned the second of the Justice's \"two great drives.\" Since 1947, the Court has addressed itself extensively to the first of the two issues in controversy-the influence of religion in the public schools. 2 Although litigation on that question continues to arise,' the Court's pronouncements, despite some criticism,4 seem largely to have resolved the

Social Problems of Drug Use and Drug Policies

Abstract: (1970). Social Problems of Drug Use and Drug Policies. International Journal of the Addictions: Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 321-333.

Tinkering with the California Bail System

Abstract: Two words express the bail system's purpose in the administration of criminal justice: release and return. The system is intended to release from pretrial detention as many arrestees as possible while providing reasonable assurance that they will return promptly for their trials. The bail system is primarily a statutory beast,' with an ancestry extending back more than 700 years.2 The California legislature has tinkered with it at every session in the past decade in an effort to correct its problems.' Nevertheless, several problems still require legislative action and many critics feel that there are basic defects in the bail system which no amount of patchwork, repairs, and modifications can correct.4 Some feel that the only solution to the alleged inherent in-

A Prisoner Looks at Writ-Writing

Abstract: I WAS BORN IN CALIFORNIA forty-four years ago of Danish parents who emigrated to the United States in the nineteenth century to escape the poverty of Europe. The poverty and strong old-country orientation of my youth fostered many conflicts with the revolutionary ideas of America as it plunged into the twentieth century. I allowed my resentments to play out in an antisocial manner. A long police record is all that I gained from my behavior. I was first committed to the custody of the California Department of Corrections in 1953 for second degree burglary. Paroled in 1957, I was returned to jail 75 days later for robbery and conspiracy to commit robbery. While imprisoned I studied law in the prison law library and read every case and textbook I was able to lay my hands on. I used every conceivable remedy to attack my judgments of conviction and tried to redress other infringements of my rights which have occurred since being jailed. Although a number of published and unpublished decisions have been rendered by the courts in disposing of actions I filed, the important question-the validity of my imprisonment-has never been satisfactorily settled.

Legal Lore of the Wild West: A Bibliographical Essay

Abstract: T HE LEGAL HERITAGE Of the English common law, already adapted to American conditions in the Atlantic colonies and Mississippi Valley, further evolved in the distinctive environment of the plains and Pacific coast. The student of this evolution, however, is hampered both by the paucity and fragmentary nature of the available material and by its deplorable presentation. No single publication has traced the history of law in the West and its administration. What little material is available must