The Burger Court—The First Ten Years

In this report we study estimation of time-delays in linear dynamical systems with additive noise. Estimating time-delays is a common engineering problem, e.g. in automatic control, system identification and signal processing. The purpose with this work is to test and evaluate a certain class of methods for time-delay estimation, especially with automatic control applications in mind. The class of methods consists of estimating the time-delay from the Laguerre transform of the input and output signals. The methods are evaluated experimentally with the aid of simulations and plots of approximation error, plots of original and Laguerre approximated input and output signals, plots of estimates, plots of RMS error, tables of ANOVA and plots of confidence intervals for different cases. The results are: Only certain input signals, e.g. steps, are useful. Systems with a not too fast dynamics give better estimation quality than pure time-delay systems despite the fact that the estimation methods were derived for pure time-delay systems. The Laguerre pole should be chosen in a certain way. The number of Laguerre functions should be as a high as possible

The United States Supreme Court: 1951-1952

NOBODY WILL SAY it was a quiet term. The total number of cases decided was again small, only eighty-nine all told. There was the usual quota of trivia, and maybe a little over; more piddling points on statutes of limitations, for example, than posterity is ever going to want to know about. But there was enough serious national business to make the term memorable. Every region felt the effects; Hollywood won a slight reprieve from censorship, while school children and their teachers in New York got no reprieve at all from school time religious training and loyalty purges, respectively. Illinoisans were warned to hold their tongues if they would disparage groups, Oregon discovered that maltreatment by its medical organizations of experiments in group medicine occurred too long ago to count, and the South postponed for a year any consideration of its basic problem of school segregation. In more international perspective, a Japanese- American traitor and military courts in Germany were subjects of decisions, and aliens within the United States had a murderously bad time with a series of cases reflecting a renewed chauvinism in legislative policy. Finally there was the steel case

Fred Vinson and the Chief Justiceship

AFFABLE, KINDLY FRED VINSON was a one-man multi-purpose project. Memory recalls few Americans with as many careers and as many successes. He was an influential Congressman, a lower court judge, head of a great lending agency, a Cabinet member, a friend and adviser of Presidents. Perhaps the pinnacle of his career, if not in prestige then in accomplishment, was his World War II service as head of the Offices of Economic Stabilization and of War Mobilization and Reconversion. Many an eye-witness account of those years pays tribute to his shrewdness, his judgment, and his tact. He made, indeed, a more outstanding personal success in some of these other roles than he did as Chief Justice of the United States. On the Supreme Court, his record was more that of a team man than an outstanding individual figure. To borrow a phrase from the baseball he loved so well, his individual attainments as a jurist do not put him in the same league with such lofty eminents as Marshall, Taney, Waite, Taft, Hughes, or Stone. His place in judicial history rather will be based upon his role as · a member of a group which together turned the course of American jurisprudence, and will gain its color from his engaging personal qualities

Justice Murphy: The Goals Attempted

THE late Justice Murphy was the most underestimated member of the Supreme Court in our time. The bulk of lawyers\u27 talk about him for years has been hostile and patronizing. Sometimes the attack has been violent, charging that Murphy knew no law, that he was merely reading his personal predilections into his decisions. Even when friendly, it has still been patronizing, as when the commentator observed that Murphy seemed to reach fairly happy results even though he lacked proper concern for legal techniques. The common elements in both attitudes has been the observer\u27s judgment that Murphy was subjective, and either inadequately mindful of rules and precedents, or ignorant of them