Maryland Law

A state appeals court declared unconstitutional yesterday a Maryland statute that prevents employers from using strikebreakers, ruling that such labor laws are the domain of federal regulators.The Court of Special Appeals ruled that the 66-year-old National Labor Relations Act pre-empts a state law that blocked use of temporary agencies to hire replacement workers during a strike.The court's decision affirmed a July 25 ruling by Prince George's County Circuit Judge Steven I. Platt to dismiss a suit by the Professional Staff Nurses Association.

WITH the dropping of state charges against Linda Tripp, she passes from history and need never trouble her fellow Marylanders again. Some will wonder what this federal civil servant does at the Defense Department to earn a salary in a classification for which she does not appear qualified, and whether she will go on doing it. But that is a minor matter. Linda Tripp is world famous for violating Maryland's law against recording a telephone call when one of the parties does not know it is being recorded.

CRIMES SUCH AS last week's kidnapping in Columbia of Stephanie Musick by an obsessed admirer are frustrating. John Robert Righter, a former co-worker of Ms. Musick's at a department store, had followed the college student and made unwanted advances for some time.Legally, however, there was little that could be done to keep Mr. Righter away from her. There is no legal way to lock someone up for a crime he or she hasn't yet committed.Maryland does have laws against stalking and harassment, but there were no grounds for charging Mr. Righter with either until Friday's kidnapping.

The police officers who make up the Maryland Law hockey team play weekend games against fellow officers, military groups or firefighters. This Saturday, the last game of the season, they take to the ice against retired professional players. In a game organized as a benefit for a fellow officer who was sidelined from the Baltimore County force as a result of line-of-duty injury, Maryland Law will face off against the Washington Capitals Alumni, retirees who can still skate a good game.

THE SITUATION of Tina Lynn Akers, the 13-year-old Annapolis mother who married the 29-year-old father of her son, may be fodder for the afternoon television shows that thrive on human dysfunction, but it is profoundly disturbing.According to our societal norms, girls the age of Ms. Akers are not supposed to marry and bear children.Yet Maryland law allowed Ms. Akers, a seventh-grade dropout, to marry Phillip Wayne Compton Jr., an Annapolis roofer, because she was pregnant and received her parents' permission.

It has been nearly two weeks since Howard County's school board told Superintendent John R. O'Rourke it wanted him to go. But with five months remaining on his contract, he is refusing to budge. And under Maryland law, there is very little the school board can do about it. "My contract is over June 30, that's the only thing I know," O'Rourke said yesterday. He has maintained that he will not be pressured to leave early. Maryland law says that only the state superintendent can remove a local superintendent during the length of his or her contract, and then only if the official has willfully neglected duties or has been immoral, insubordinate or incompetent - none of which apply to O'Rourke.

It is hard to imagine Karen H. Rothenberg was ever anything but enthusiastic about the University of Maryland Law School. Yet she says she was a reluctant recruit when she first set foot there 17 years ago. Rothenberg, who was named dean of the school last week, comes across as its most energetic cheerleader. But when the school's dean in 1983, Michael Kelly, approached her about teaching, she was dubious. She had spent the previous four years as a member of a large Washington law firm, Covington and Burling, working on the increasingly complex legal issues emerging from the changes that were about to revolutionize the health care industry.

There was barely a whisper about God during a Carroll County-sponsored seminar Friday on the state constitution. The speaker was introduced as Pastor David Whitney to an audience of about 50 county employees in a lecture hall at Carroll Community College, but he made no attempt to proselytize. "I am honored to be with people who care about their country," said Whitney, the pastor of a Pasadena church who frequently lectures for the Institute on the Constitution. "I commend the county commissioners for having the foresight to offer you an opportunity to study the supreme law of the state.

Wending their way into a crowded Maryland House of Delegates hearing room yesterday, the four 16-year-olds were worried they'd face tough questions from legislators. The bill the girls conceived and came to Annapolis to support would widen the pool of bone marrow donors by lowering the eligible age to 16, with parental consent. Minority patients have a particularly hard time finding donors and the girls, who are all African-American, are keenly aware of that. But it's a technical, medical subject, not a feel-good symbolic issue that politicians can support without much thought.

When one adult hits another, Maryland law defines this as assault. When a larger, stronger adult hits a child, this act can be interpreted under Maryland law as "reasonable" discipline. We find it difficult to understand why it is acceptable to hit a child with an object such as a belt, when it is always unacceptable to hit another adult, either with a fist or anything else. "Spare the rod ... spoil the child" has guided child rearing for thousands of years. Almost all parents have used physical (or corporal)