William O. Douglas

“ Benjamin V. Cohen has shown why the legislative trial has no place in our system:
'There is no excuse for congressional committees acting as 'people's courts' following totalitarian patterns.
'Legislative trials, since the trial of Socrates, have had an odious history. Legislative trials combine the functions of prosecutor and judge and deny to the accused the right to impartial and independent judgment. Legislative trials are subject to the influence of partisanship, passion and prejudice. Legislative trials are political trials. ”

“ The House could not force a witness to testify in a House investigation whose sole and avowed purpose was to decide the guilt of a person already impeached, or to determine whether or not a treaty should be ratified, since the Constitution entrusts these functions to the Senate. Neither House could conduct an investigation for the sole and avowed purpose of determining whether an official of the State of New York should be impeached, since that determination is reserved to the Legislature of that State.' Snee, Televising Congressional Hearings, 42 Geo.L.J. 1, 9 (1953) . ”

“ Congressional investigations as they have evolved, are in practice 'proceedings' of a grave nature so far as individual liberties are concerned. Not all committee hearings are 'trials' of the witness; not all committee hearings are televised or broadcast ”

“ Hearings have indeed often become a spectacle, [4] some of the reasons being succinctly stated by the experienced Chairman of the Senate Committee on Government Operations, and head of the Permanent Committee on Investigations, Senator McClellan of Arkansas:
'First let me say that the primary purpose and actually the only legitimate purpose for such hearings must be a legislative purpose, but out of that also flows the opportunity to disseminate information f great value and advantage to the public. ”

“ Since by reason of the First Amendment Congress may make no law 'prohibiting the free exercise' of religion, it may not enter the field through investigation and probe the minds of witnesses as to whether they go to church or to the confessional regularly, why they chose this church rather than that one, etc. ”

“ His specific objection was directed to the televised hearings by the Kefauver Committee in 1951:
'The President is most seriously concerned. The trouble with television, he said, is that a man is held before cameras and 40,000,000 people more or less hear him charged with so and so, and the public, untrained generally with evaluating the presentation of evidence, is inclined to think him guilty just because he is charged. ”

“ If he's taking the fifth amendment and reading from a card, the light helps him to see to read the script on the card and I don't see any reason to turn them off.' [5]
A strong case has been made for holding these 'spectacles' to be out of bounds:
'1. The use of these publicity media bears no real and substantial relation to any legitimate purpose of a congressional investigating committee. Yet, it constitutes a substantial restraint upon the liberty of an unwilling witness. Hence to force him to testify before these media exceeds the constitutional bounds of the investigating power ”