Not for Burning

THE SUPREME COURT

On a blustery March day in 1966, four young men touched a gas burner to their draft cards and reclassification notices on the steps of the South Boston Courthouse. Well publicized in advance by the students, the happening attracted a large gallery, including several FBI agents. For their draft resistance, three of the youths were sent to prison for up to three years; the fourth, David P. O'Brien, a 19-year-old Boston University freshman, was sentenced under the Federal Youth Correction Act to a stiff term of up to six years.

O'Brien took his case to a court of appeals, which upheld his conviction for not carrying a draft card, as required by the Selective Service Act of 1948. However, the court ruled unconstitutional a 1965 congressional amendment to that act prohibiting destruction or mutilation of draft records, reasoning that the amendment, in effect, abridged freedom of speech. In a 7-to-l decision last week, the Supreme Court disagreed and upheld the congressional amendment by comparing the burning of draft cards to the destruction of tax records, also required to be kept by law. "We cannot accept the view," observed Chief Justice Warren, "that an apparently limitless variety of conduct can be labeled 'speech.' "

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