"Domestic Tranquility"

Richard Nixon swept into office on a platform of "law-and-order," capitalizing on the public's legitimate fears of crime. His emphasis, unfortunately, was always more on order than law, and such innovations as no-knock warrants became a real danger to any traditional idea of justice. But in a speech recently at the Yale Law School, President Ford said that he was shunning the law-and-order catch phrase for the war on crime and substituting instead a lofty, ringing theme for his Administration: to "insure domestic tranquility."

His source was the preamble to the Constitution of the U.S., and his aim was to bring reason rather than rhetoric to the discussion of crime. He called for speedy trials, for mandatory sentences in some cases of violent crime, for more humane treatment of convicts. The President returned to the old constitutional phrase, he said, because "I do not seek vindictive punishment of the criminal, but protection of the victim." Nor was crime, he noted, always committed on the street or in dark alleys. Alluding to the misdeeds of his predecessor, he said: "I have made it a matter of the highest priority to-restore to the Executive Branch decency, honesty and adherence to the law at all levels ... There is no way to inculcate in society the spirit of law if society's leaders are not scrupulously law-abiding."

Actually, the President's new/old phrase applies not only to crime, but also to other fevers disturbing the public psyche. Regardless of his performance in other areas, it is at least encouraging that he should try to reduce passions, lift the nation's spirit and seek answers to very real problems by beginning at the beginning, with the Constitution itself.

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