Joseph Toussaint v. Daniel McCarthy Joseph Toussaint v. James Rowland, Director, California Department of Corrections Daniel Vasquez Robert Borg

NOONAN, Circuit Judge:

These consolidated appeals involve a class of prisoners, who, as a class, are the toughest for a prison to handle. They are at the bottom of the social heap. They have, nonetheless, a human dignity and certain rights secured by the Constitution of the United States. The command of the Constitution has to be made concrete. At the same time prisons must be run by prison officials not judges. The tension between proper administrative discretion and necessary constitutional concreteness has produced this appeal, the fifth in this case.

The basic case was begun 17 years ago,…