Felix Frankfurter

“ The Commission's hearing are not proceedings requiring a person to answer for an 'infamous crime,' which must be based on an indictment of a grand jury (Amendment V) , nor are they 'criminal prosecutions' giving an accused the rights defined by Amendment VI. Since due process is the constitutional axis on which decision must turn, our concern is not with absolutes, either of governmental power or of safeguards protecting individuals. ”

“ History may satisfy constitutionality, but constitutionality need not produce the title deeds of history. Mere age may establish due process, but due process does not preclude new ends of government or new means for achieving them. Since the Commission has, within its legislative framework, provided procedural safeguards appropriate to its proper function, claims of unfairness offending due process fall. The proposed Shreveport hearing fully comports with the Constitution and the law. ”

“ When official pronouncements on individuals purport to rest on evidence and investigation, it is right to demand that those so accused be given a full opportunity for their defense in such investigation, excepting, of course, grand jury investigations. ”

“ In appraising the constitutionally permissive investigative procedure claimed to subject individuals to incrimination or defamation without adequate opportunity for de ense, a relevant distinction is between those proceedings which are preliminaries to official judgments on individuals and those, like the investigation of this Commission, charged with responsibility to gather information as a solid foundation for legislative action. Judgments by the Commission condemning or stigmatizing individuals are not called for. ”

“ Were the Commission exercising an accusatory function, were its duty to find that named individuals were responsible for wrongful deprivation of voting rights and to advertise such finding or to serve as part of the process of criminal prosecution, the rigorous protections relevant to criminal prosecutions might well be the controlling starting point for assessing the protection which the Commission's procedure provides. ”

“ The rules significantly direct the Commission to abstain from public exposure by taking in executive session any evidence or testimony tending 'to defame, degrade, or incriminate any person.' A person so affected is given the right to read such evidence and to reply to it. ”

“ By these two actions judgments were sought to declare the proposed hearing illegal and to restrain the members of the Commission from holding it.
The rules of procedure formulated by the Commission amply rest on leave of Congress. I need add nothing on this phase of the case to the Court's opinion. While it is a most salutary doctrine of constitutional adjudication to give a statute even a strained construction to avoid facing a serious doubt of constitutionality, 'avoidance of a difficulty will not be pressed to the point of disingenuous evasion. ”

“ These detailed provisions are obviously designed as safeguards against injury to persons who appear in public hearings before the Commission. The provision for screening defamatory and incriminatory testimony in order to keep it from the public may well be contrasted with the procedure in the Joint Anti-Fascist case, where the very purpose of the inquiry was to make an official judgment that certain organizations were 'Communist.' Such condemnation of an organization would of course taint its members. ”