Harry Blackmun

“ Mrs. Baird is an intelligent and knowledgeable person. She holds a college degree and a graduate degree, and, as is assumed here, she has demonstrated in the Bar examination an acceptable knowledge and mastery of the law. There is no claim of vagueness or lack of awareness on her part of precisely what Question 27 meant or of what it was intended to probe. The applicant obviously knew the scope of the question and its concern with the Party and with forceful and violent overthrow of the Government.
2. Mrs. Baird's use of the 'Not Applicable' response to Question 27 is not fully understandable. ”

“ From a profession charged with such responsibilities there must be exacted those qualities of truth-speaking, of a high sense of honor, of granite discretion, of the strictest observance of fiduciary responsibility, that have, throughout the centuries, been compendiously described as 'moral character.' 'History overwhelmingly establishes that many youths like the petitioner were drawn by the mirage of communism during the depression era, only to have their eyes later opened to reality. ”

“ That, however, is not the task of the Committee or of the Arizona Supreme Court. It is Sara Baird's task. It is a truism, I think, that the Communist endeavor works beneath the surface as well as in the open and that high-sounding names have been the front and the verbal shield for something very different from what the name imports.
4. No one is in a better position to know the aim and purpose and advocacy of an organization than a member. ”

“ Justice STEWART puts it in his separate concurrence here, that 'under some circumstances simple inquiry into present or past Communist Party membership of an applicant for admission to the Bar is not as such unconstitutional.'
I think the Court really decided more than that. I say this because (a) in Konigsberg the applicant had 'reiterated unequivocally his disbelief in violent overthrow, and stated that he had never knowingly been a member of any organization which advocated such action,' 366 U.S. at 39, 81 S.Ct. at 1000 ”

“ Baird's expectation actively to support the objective of violent overthrow; and that, if her membership is of a nominal character and she does not participate in the advocacy views, there would be no legal basis for refusing a recommendation for admission. [5] The material quoted in the plurality opinion's footnote 8 is from the body of the Memorandum ”