Reactions of State Supreme Courts to a U.S. Supreme Court Civil Liberties Decision

decisions. Because of its direct relationship and administrative responsibilities, the Supreme Court can exercise a closer supervisory control over the lower federal courts than it can over state courts. But many controversial Supreme Court policies of the last couple of decades have involved issues coming from the state courts, e.g., obscenity prosecutions, right to counsel, desegregation, exclusion of illegally seized evidence, police interrogation practices, etc. Considering the origin and structure of our federal system, a natural antagonism exists between the Supreme Court and state courts- particularly the states' highest appellate courts. While this was perhaps most dramatically illustrated in the early classic struggles between John Marshall and Spencer Roane, the mistrust and resistance is ever-present. It attained unusual visibility in 1958 when the Council of State Chief Justices in a 36-8 vote adopted a resolution criticizing the U.S. Supreme Court Justices for promoting "an accelerating trend towards increasing power of the national government and correspondingly contracted power of the state governments" and charging that judicial federalism was endangered by "the extent of the control over the action of the states which the