Background

I had retired as a United States Magistrate in 1973, having served earlier as an Assistant United States Attorney, U.S. Commissioner and Director-Chief Counsel of the San Diego Legal Aid Society. During the ensuing years I had retained an interest in public interest law, handling pro bono matters out of my retirement home office in the San Diego backcountry community of Julian.

My attention in the spring of 1977 was directed to a Los Angeles desegregation action, known as the Crawford case, because my only television reception was from Los Angeles stations due to the mountains between my Julian cabin and the San Diego stations.

The 1975 turmoil over busing in Boston was recalled as I listened nightly to complaints on TV by Los Angeles parents similarly facing judicially-ordered busing there. I had read daily in the Christian Science Monitor of this opposition in Boston and discerned that the press, TV, and radio generally were not reporting those events from the standpoint of the objecting parents. They focused primarily upon the vociferousness of the opposition without much consideration of the nature of the action imposed upon the busing dissenters.

But I did draw from these reported actions that they were of the nature that arises from persons believing they have lacked the consideration they were entitled to receive in governmental action being taken against them. And I spent considerable time during that period studying and researching this situation from the point of view of the busing dissenters.

With the Boston “uprising” in mind, nightly I watched Angelenos