going well.

But, on November 20, 1962, along came a half step back: People vs. Norton. In this case there was a writ from the court. The officer was stationed in the men's restroom of a theatre, and while there he had secreted himself behind a marble partition separating the room and running directly behind two toilet stalls themselves separated by a marble partition. On the opposite side of the men's room directly in front of the toilet stalls were the urinals. From his position behind the partition the officer was able to keep the general area under surveillance by the use of several observation holes which had been cut in the marble. The observation holes had been cut through the marble it should be noted. The toilet doors in this particular place had been removed a fact the court took into consideration, I am sure. If they had been closed toilets, I do not think the court would have made the decision it did. As it was, the justices said that while it is true the illegal acts were observed through the holes, anyone else could have walked in and seen the incidents so the man had abandoned his right to privacy by doing what he did in a room without a door where there was no chance of privacy. Also the part of the room used by the vice officer was available to the public. The distinction in this case is a poor one a narrow one. It should have gone on to the Supreme Court. But the Supreme Court has declined to take jurisdiction over the matter. So the Norton case remains law. No one may know what the Norton case really stands for. The two earlier cases were Supreme Court cases, while Norton was only in the District Court of Appeals. But here we have a sample of what we are all up against in the field of civil rights.

The Federal Law for a very long time has been more liberal in the field of search and seizure and in

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civil rights matters than have the states' laws. The United States Supreme Court has for, I should say, at least thirty years taken an increasingly interested attitude concerning civil rights. The court has been the first to lead the way in racial integration cases and in labor matters and in many, many others for that matter. But due to the strange system we have of both state and federal constitutions, the protections afforded by federal law have not always protected the citizens of the various states. In 1961 down came a case called Matt vs. Ohio. The Matt case seemed to indicate strongly that from there on out the states would need to take a second look at what they were doing. What the Matt case said was that the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which is the unlawful search and seizure amendment, applies to the states, not directly but via the conduit of the Fourteenth Amendment, which is the due process of law amendment. The court said that this particular amendment applies to the states and, therefore, the Fourth Amendment becomes, in effect, engrafted to it in each of the fifty states via the Fourteenth. This means, I believe and I am attempting to so persuade the judges in our Supreme Court that the decisions of the United States Supreme Court in the field of civil rights must be looked to by the courts. of California, and that since the United States Supreme Court unquestionably has the right to interpret what our Constitution means, and, further, since the constitutional protections apply to the states, then, ipso facto, those particular protections belong to the State of California and each and every other state. The Attorney General of California, Stanley Mosk, takes exception to this view as does the office of the Los Angeles District Attorney. Our offices took this case up on a narcotics matter re-

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