Law: A Controversial Quartet

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Housing discrimination. Stepping into a bitter racial and political imbroglio involving Yonkers, N.Y., the Supreme Court last week slapped federal District Judge Leonard Sand on the wrist for an "abuse" of judicial discretion. Following years of municipal obstructionism and a refusal by the city to carry out a housing-desegregation decree to which it had earlier consented, Sand in 1988 ordered Yonkers council members to vote for the plan. When four legislators disobeyed, the judge imposed potentially crushing contempt fines on them and the city. Last week, in a 5-to-4 vote, the court ruled that Sand should not have fined the council members until he was certain that the fines against the city alone would not force compliance. Wrote Chief Justice William Rehnquist: "The imposition of sanctions on individual legislators is designed to cause them to vote, not with a view to the interest of their constituents or of the city, but with a view solely to their own personal interests."

Civil rights advocates were dismayed at the decision, which they saw as another attempt to water down legal remedies against inequality. "This case may encourage unwarranted defiance of judicial authority in civil rights matters," observed Harvard University law professor Laurence Tribe. Added ) Cornell University law professor Steven Shiffrin: "There is no place for deference to the legislative process when it does not act in good faith." But Peter Chema, one of the targeted Yonkers council members, was jubilant. "This is a democracy," he declared, "and an elected official's vote is sacred."

Criminal rights. The Justices refused to carve out another exception to the so-called exclusionary rule. This principle generally forbids prosecutors to prove their case with evidence obtained illegally from a defendant. The court has long made an exception in cases in which the defendant takes the stand, by allowing the use of tainted evidence to attack his credibility. But last week the Justices refused to permit such evidence to impeach the credibility of a witness testifying in support of a Chicago murder defendant. The ruling left some experts scratching their heads and anticipating future criminal cases because the fifth and deciding vote came from Justice Byron White, normally one of the staunchest judicial critics of the exclusionary rule.