Frank Murphy

“ The overthrow of the capitalist class is feasible only by the transformation of the proletariat into the ruling class, able to crush the inevitable and desperate resistance of the bourgeoisie, and to organize, for the new settlement of economic order, all the toiling and exploited masses. ”

“ At the moment when the accentuated class struggle turns into civil war, the proletariat must inevitably form its State organization as a fighting organization, which cannot contain any of the representatives of the former ruling classes; all fictions of a 'national will' are harmful to the proletariat at that time, and a parliamentary division of authority is needless and injurious to it; the only form of proletarian dictatorship is a Republic of Soviets. ”

“ As I have said, it is not questioned that the ultimate aim of the Communist Party in 1927 and the years preceding was the triumph of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the consequent overthrow of capitalistic or bourgeois government and society. Attachment to such dictatorship can hardly be thought to indicate attachment to the principles of an instrument of government which forbids dictatorship and precludes the rule of the minority or the suppression of minority rights by dictatorial government. ”

“ This truth is that the bourgeoisie, the most enlightened and democratic portion of the bourgeoisie, is even now not stopping at deceit and crime, at the slaughter of millions of workmen and peasants, in order to retain the right of private ownership over the means of production. ”

“ Every utterance of party leaders is not taken as party gospel. And we would deny our experience as men if we did not recognize that official party programs are unfortunately often opportunistic devices as much honored in the breach as in the observance. [46] On the basis of the present record we cannot say that the Communist Party is so different in this respect that its principles stand forth with perfect clarity, and especially is this so with relation to the crucial issue of advocacy of force and violence, upon which the Government admits the evidence is sharply conflicting. ”

“ Now more than ever is the working class in need of a strong organization. Without losing an hour of invaluable time, the working class must keep on indefatigably preparing for the impending decisive struggle.' (p. 33)
'Until the time when the power of government will have been finally conquered by the proletariat, until the time when the proletarian rule will have been firmly established beyond the possibility of a bourgeois restoration, the Communist Party will have in its organized ranks only a minority of the workers. ”

“ Whatever attitude we may individually hold toward persons and organizations that believe in or advocate extensive changes in our existing order, it should be our desire and concern at all times to uphold the right of free discussion and free thinking to which we as a people claim primary attachment. To neglect this duty in a proceeding in which we are called upon to judge whether a particular individual has failed to manifest attachment to the Constitution would be ironical indeed.
Our concern is with what Congress meant to be the extent of the area of allowable thought under the statute. ”

“ The United States has the same interest as other nations in demanding of those who seek its citizenship some measure of attachment to its institutions. Our concern is only that the declared will of Congress shall prevail that no man shall become a citizen or retain his citizenship whose behavior for five years before his application does not show attachment to the principles of the Constitution. ”

“ So uncertain a chain of proof does not add up to the requisite 'clear, unequivocal, and convincing' evidence for setting aside a naturalization decree. Were the law otherwise, valuable rights would rest upon a slender reed, and the security of the status of our naturalized citizens might depend in considerable degree upon the political temper of majority thought and the stresses of the times. Those are consequences foreign to the best traditions of this nation, and the characteristics of our institutions. ”

“ It is true that the Fifth Amendment protects private property, even against taking for public use without compensation. But throughout our history many sincere people whose attachment to the general constitutional scheme cannot be doubted have, for various and even divergent reasons, urged differing degrees of governmental ownership and control of natural resources, basic means of production, and banks and the media of exchange, either with or without compensation. ”

“ If, seventeen years after a federal court adjudged him entitled to be a citizen, that judgment can be nullified and he can be stripped of this most precious right, by nothing more than reexamination upon the merits of the very facts the judgment established, no naturalized person's citizenship is or can be secure. ”

“ For some time the question whether advocacy of governmental overthrow by force and violence is a principle of the Communist Party of the United States has perplexed courts, administrators, legislators, and students. ”

“ As pointed out before, this is a denaturalization proceeding, and it is a judgment, not merely a claim or a grant, which is being attacked. Assuming as we have that the United States is entitled to attack a finding of attachment upon a charge of illegality, it must sustain the heavy burden which then rests upon it to prove lack of attachment by 'clear, unequivocal, and convincing' evidence which does not leave the issue in doubt. When the attachment requirement is construed as indicated above, we do not think the Government has carried its burden of proof. ”

“ On cross examination Hynes admitted that he never attempted a philosophic analysis of the literature he read, but only read it to secure evidence, reading and underscoring those portions which, in his opinion, 'had to do with force or violence or overthrowing of this system of government other than by lawful means provided in the Constitution.' He testified that he never saw any behavior on petitioner's part that brought him into conflict with any law. ”

“ For that too ignores the question whether Congress can so condition the judgment and is but another way of saying that a determinatio , made by an exercise of judicial power under Article III, can be conditioned by legislative mandate so as not to determine finally any ultimate fact in issue.
The effect of cancellation is to nullify the judgment of admission. If it is a judgment, and no one disputes that it is, that quality in itself requires the burden of proof the court has held that Congress intended in order to overturn it. ”

“ It was proclaimed that 'For all countries, even for most free 'legal' and 'peaceful' ones in the sense of a lesser acuteness in the class struggle, the period has arrived, when it has become absolutely necessary for every Communist party to join systematically lawful and unlawful work, lawful and unlawful organization. * * * The class struggle in almost every country of Europe and America is entering the phase of civil war. Under such conditions the Communists can have no confidence in bourgeois laws. ”

“ That it is a judgment, and one of at least a coordinate court, which the cancellation proceeding attacks and seeks to overthrow, requires this much at least, that solemn decrees may not be lightly overturned and that citizens may not be deprived of their status merely because one judge views their political and other beliefs with a more critical eye or a different slant, however, honestly and sincerely, than another. ”

“ These would indeed be significant changes in our present government structure changes which it is safe to say are not desired by the majority of the people in this country-but whatever our personal views, as judges we cannot say that a person who advocates their adoption through peaceful and constitutional means is not in fact attached to the Constitution-those institutions are not enumerated as necessary in the Government's test of 'general political philosophy', and it is conceivable that 'ordered liberty' could be maintained without them. ”

“ On the other hand, owing not only to its relationship to the working masses, but also to the complicated mutual relations within the various groups of the bourgeois itself, the bourgeoisie is forced to have some of its policies in one way or another passed through parliament, where the various cliques haggle for power, exhibit their strong sides and betray their weak ones, get themselves unmasked, etc., etc. ”

“ In some of our larger cities a majority of the school children are the offspring of parents only one generation, if that far, removed from the steerage of the immigrant ship, children of those who sought refuge in the new world from the cruelty and oppression of the old, where men have been burned at the stake, imprisoned, and driven into exile in countless numbers for their political and religious beliefs. ”

“ If an anarchist is naturalized, the United States may bring an action under § 15 to set aside the certificate on the grounds of illegality. Since Congress by § 7 of the Act forbids the naturalization of anarchists, the alien anarchist who obtains the certificate has procured it illegally whatever the naturalization court might find. The same would be true of communists if Congress declared they should be ineligible for citizenship. ”

“ The annihilation of the existing political structure was deemed as necessary in the United States as elsewhere. [90] If elected to public office the Communist was directed to 'facilitate this task of destruction' of the existing 'apparatus', since the 'bourgeois State organizations' were to be utilized only 'with the object of destroying them.' [91]
It is unnecessary to give further examples of the teachings of Communist Party organizations with which the documentary evidence is shot through and through. Appended to this opinion are excerpts from two exhibits. ”

“ Even if we were to recast an Act of Congress in accordance with our own notions of policy, it would be difficult to discover any considerations warranting the adoption of a device whose only effect would be to make certain that persons never entitled to the benefits of citizenship could secure and retain them. ”

“ I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions. I think moderate imperfections had better be borne with; because, when once known, we accommodate ourselves to them, and find practical means of correcting their ill effects. But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand and hand with the progress of the human mind. ”

“ We should not tread o close to the domain of freedom of conscience without an explicit mandate from those who specify the conditions on which citizenship is granted to or withheld from aliens. At least when two interpretations of the Naturalization Act are possible we should choose the one which is the more hospitable to that ideal for which American citizenship itself stands.
Citizenship can be granted only on the basis of the statutory right which Congress has created. ”