Comments on the papers from the legal community
The page "Reactions to the Warren Report" lists these three articles from the academic legal community that discuss the conclusions of the report:
"A
Measure of the Achievement" (Herbert L. Packer, The Nation, 2
November 1964)
"A
Lawyer's Notes on the Warren Commission Report" (Alfredda Scobey [staff
member of WC], American Bar Association Journal, January 1965)
"Death
of a President: The Established Facts" (Lord Devlin, Atlantic
Monthly, March 1965)
Individually and collectively, these articles are excellent. Herbert
L. Packer was a distinguished professor of law at Stanford University. His
article constructs a "minimal case" against Oswald, consisting of five
main points based solely on physical evidence, and shows how none of the critics
by that time had confronted any of these core conclusions. In what will surely
be salt in the wounds of the critics, he emphasizes that none of these points
require eyewitness testimony or any evidence from the subsequent killing of
Patrolman Tippit. (What a pity that high-quality analysis like this has long
since disappeared from the JFK "debate.") Alfredda Scobey, a former
lawyer for the Warren Commission, discusses the evidentiary aspects of the
Warren Report, and makes the strong point that even if all the witness testimony
were impeached, the remaining physical and documentary evidence would leave
Oswald's basic guilt unaffected. With this argument, she is agreeing with
Professor Packer. Lord Devlin is, an eminent judge in the British legal system,
also is highly complimentary to the Warren Report. After summarizing the
eyewitness and physical evidence against Oswald, he strips all the uncertain
evidence away (essentially all the witness evidence) and lists the (highly
persuasive) core evidence that remains. He thus duplicates the main conclusion
presented by Packer and Scobey, but gets there in a slightly different way. But
as with those roads and Rome, all three of these lines of reasoning arrive at
the same conclusion.
For a more-detailed discussion of these three articles, see "The
three jurists and the physical evidence."