Legal Views of the Warren Commission

    We have all heard and read endless amounts about the Warren Commission and its report. We are familiar with the views of the Centrists, the Rightists, and the Leftists. But have you ever read any views from within the academic legal profession? Well, they are out there, or at least were out there some time ago, but have been roundly neglected. I have decided to prepare a section with legal views of the Warren Commission because I think the perspective of these people is valuable and deserves another hearing.
    The writings of legal people fall into two broad groups, those that comment on the commission itself, its procedures, etc., and those that comment on the report and its conclusions. Of course, most articles on the commission itself stray somewhat into its conclusions, and vice versa. This is quite natural, and does nothing to weaken the central focus of the article.
    The articles that comment on the commission and its workings include a single early article from The Nation (September 1964), followed by a suite of five articles from the May 1965 issue of the New York University Law Review, which together composed the entire issue. These five articles are extremely interesting, to put it mildly. The entire May 1965 issue, "A Symposium on the Warren Commission Report," can be found at 40 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 403–612 (1965). The symposium is posted by permission of the Law Review.

"The Warren Commission" (Maurice Rosenberg, The Nation, 14 September 1964)
"The Warren Commission From The Procedural Standpoint" (Arthur L. Goodheart, NYU Law Rev., May 1965)
"The Warren Commission And The Fourth Shot: A Reflection On The Fundamentals Of Forensic Fact-finding" (Paul L. Freese, NYU Law Rev., May 1965)
"Did Lee Harvey Oswald Act Without Help?" ( J. M. Van Bemmelen, NYU Law Rev., May 1965)
"Why The Warren Commission?" ( Robert F. Cushman, NYU Law Rev., May 1965)
"Trial by Newspaper" ( Louis L. Jaffe, NYU Law Rev., May 1965)

    The five articles from the NYU Law Review are written in the legal tradition of using many footnotes for references and comments. Unfortunately, HTML renders footnotes as endnotes, which makes them inconvenient to read. I therefore recommend that anyone who wishes to study these articles download the Word 97/2000 versions of them, at the links below. I have prepared them in two-column format with footnotes at the bottom of each page. I also strongly recommend that people who read them in HTML take time to read the footnotes, even though it is somewhat unpleasant—some of the authors have put important material there.

Word 97/2000
"The Warren Commission From The Procedural Standpoint" (Arthur L. Goodheart, NYU Law Rev., May 1965)
"The Warren Commission And The Fourth Shot: A Reflection On The Fundamentals Of Forensic Fact-finding" (Paul L. Freese, NYU Law Rev., May 1965)
"Did Lee Harvey Oswald Act Without Help?" (J. M. Van Bemmelen, NYU Law Rev., May 1965)
"Why The Warren Commission?" (Robert F. Cushman, NYU Law Rev., May 1965)
"Trial by Newspaper" (Louis L. Jaffe, NYU Law Rev., May 1965)

    The articles that comment mainly on the conclusions of the commission include three from 1964 and 1965 and two from 1967. All are written by distinguished jurists and are models of careful thinking. The first three and the last are short; the fourth runs to 35 pages. There are all treated in "Reactions to the Warren Report." I give them all my highest recommendation.

"A Measure of the Achievement" (Herbert L. Packer, The Nation, 2 November 1964)
"A Lawyer's Notes on the Warren Commission Report" (Alfredda Scobey [staff member of WC], American Bar Association Journal, January 1965)
"Death of a President: The Established Facts" (Lord Devlin, Atlantic Monthly, March 1965)
"The Assassins" (John Kaplan, The American Scholar, Spring 1967, pages 271–306)
"The Warren Commission and the Legal Process" (Richard M. Mosk, Case and Comment, May–June 1967, pages 13–20)

    This suite of legal articles will be expanded upon as time and resources permit.

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