Hugo Black

“ Even assuming, however, that the Civil Rights Act was intended to let people who enter restaurants take the law into their own hands by forcibly remaining when service is refused them, this would be no basis for holding that Congress also meant to compel States to abate convictions like these for lawless conduct occurring before the Act was passed. ”

“ By today's discovery of a "long-established rule of our cases," the Court has now put back on Congress the burden of spelling out expressly, statute by statute, in laws passed hereafter that it does not want to upset convictions for past crimes, a burden which Congress renounced nearly 100 years ago and which it did not know it had when it passed the 1964 Act. ”

“ Furthermore, I have grave doubt about the power of Congress acting under the Commerce Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clause to take the unprecedented step of abating these past state convictions. Yet the [p321] Court judicially declares that "there is no public interest to be served" in upholding the convictions of these trespassers, a conclusion of policy which I had thought was only for legislative bodies to decide. ”