For more than a decade, while Congress and the FCC were debating the big issues of national communications policy with broadcasters and cable television executives, thousands of municipalities quietly made decisions that may decide much of the future of broadband communications. With scant public notice, local officials bestowed lucrative, long-term franchises which set forth terms and conditions for the development of CATV for decades to come.

Police brutality and police harassment are crimes. Ironically, they are probably prompted or encouraged by a widespread public concern with "law and order," with stopping "crime in the streets." Much of police misconduct may stem from a desire by police to Jive up to their own and the public's image of them as tough crime stoppers; they may act overzealously to detect and apprehend wrongdoers.

Serrano v. Priest, decided by the California Supreme Court (sitting en bane) on August 30, 1971, represents the first successful attack on public state education financing systems in a judicial campaign dating back to 1968. The first efforts aimed at redesigning the educational fiscal base failed largely because of the adoption in the complaints of a judicially unmanageable standard - that the relief granted should result in spending according to the educational needs of each child. This theory, based on the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, was put forth initially in 1968 in a state court .action filed by the Board of Education of the City of Detroit against the State of Michigan. Although this suit was eventually dropped before any important judicial determinations had been made, other suits embodying the same general equal protection theory were instituted in Virginia, Illinois and other states. The Federal court in Illinois dismissed the suit brought there for lack of "discoverable and manageable standards," and the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed (with one dissent) without argument or opinion. The dismissal of the Virginia case was similarly affirmed at the High Court's next term, this time with two dissents.