Revolutionary Tribunal

“ Barère first proclaimed from the tribune of the Convention that terror must be the order of the day. It was by Barère that the Revolutionary Tribunal of Paris was provided with the aid of a public accuser worthy of such a court, the infamous Fouquier Tinville. It was Barère who, when one of the old members of the National Assembly had been absolved by the Revolutionary Tribunal, gave orders that a fresh jury should be summoned. "Acquit one of the National Assembly!" he cried. "The Tribunal is turning against the Revolution." ”

“ Buchez et Roux, XXXIII., 195. (Report of Couthon and decree in conformity therewith, Prairial 22, year II.) "The revolutionary tribunal is organised for the punishment of the people's enemies.. .. The penalty for all offences within its jurisdiction is death. Those are held to be enemies of the people who shall have misled the people, or the representatives of the people, into measures opposed to the interests of liberty; those who shall have sought to create discouragement by favoring the undertakings of tyrants leagued against the Republic ”

“ When the Girondists were brought before the tribunal, the people seem to have shown more interest in men, whose distinguished talents had so often swayed the legislative body, than was altogether acceptable to the Jacobins, who were induced to fear some difficulty in carrying through their conviction. They obtained a decree from the Convention, declaring that the president of the Revolutionary Tribunal should be at liberty to close the procedure so soon as the jury should have made up their minds, and without hearing the accused in their defence. ”

“ The Extraordinary Commission and the Revolutionary Tribunals are special, temporary bodies designed to ease the revolution over its early, critical stages. Eventually they will be abolished and the entire business of administering justice handed over to the Peoples' Courts. ”

“ Can a Court be a shield against the proud oppressor when a daring leader can crush them with his nod? Be not deceived my fellow citizens—no nation hath yet made such an experiment without feeling its bitter and dreadful effects. See the revolutionary tribunals of France—See in them a melancholy picture of corrupt courts and unprincipled judges—The cruelty of that nation hath appeared no where more infernal than through their forms of law and in their sanctuaries of justice—a corrupt judgment seat is the greatest curse with which a people can be punished. ”

“ The method of administering justice followed by the Revolutionary Tribunals is primitive. The judges are guided by no rules, instructions, or laws, but solely by what is known as “revolutionary conscience.” ”

“ The proceedings are before a magistrate of our own state, presumed to possess a common sympathy with his fellow-citizens; and where, upon the supposition that a freeman is arrested, he may readily procure the evidence of his freedom. If the magistrate should finally err in granting the certificate, the party can still resort to the protection of the national judiciary. The proceedings by which his rights have been invaded being under a law of Congress, the remedy for error or injustice belongs peculiarly to that high tribunal. ”

“ I say here upon my responsibility, with reference to the recent decision of the Supreme Court, that it is an offence to the dignity and respectability of the nation that this tribunal, under the general authority vested in it under the Constitution and laws, does not protect itself from the contamination of rebels and traitors, until the rebellion itself shall be suppressed and those men shall be restored to their former rights as citizens of the country. ”

“ By the constitution the judicial power extends to questions of personal liberty, and its exercise in that respect cannot be interfered with by Congress.
Congress, having the right to establish the tribunals, must give to them such an organization as will enable them to exercise completely the judicial power created by the constitution. A tribunal is not constituted unless it is endued with the active powers necessary to the exercise of its jurisdiction. ”

“ I think it is a time, this day, when it becomes a judicial tribunal to see to it, that this extraordinary combination of Executive power and patronage; this alarm and this anxiety at head quarters, does not lead to a violation of private rights and personal liberty. I think there is a pressure brought to bear against the free expression of popular opinion, against the exercise of private judgment—a pressure felt even in the courts of law, intimidating counsel, overawing witnesses, and making the defence of liberty a peril. ”

“ And a chief reason of this stability has been the organization of the courts upon rational and conservative principles. During the Terror France had her fill of political tribunals. Since the Terror French judges, under every government, have shunned politics and have devoted themselves to construing impartially the Code. Therefore all parties, and all ranks, and all conditions of men have sustained the courts. In France, as in England, there is no class jealousy touching the control of the judiciary.
Footnotes [40] Histoire du Tribunal Revolutionaire de Paris, H. Wallon, I, 57. ”

“ But the difficulty is, the courts long since decided that the constitutional provisions do not act upon the citizens, except as guarantees, ex proprio vigore, and in order to give practical force to them there must be legislation. As, for example, in trial by jury, a man can invoke the Constitution to prevent his being tried, in a proper case, by any other tribunal than a jury ”

“ The tribunal had been specially set up by their political opponents, without giving them any effective voice either in its composition or upon the character and scope of its powers. For the first time in England since the Great Rebellion, men were practically put upon their trial on a political charge, without giving them the protection of a jury. ”

“ It is well known, that, at the close of the National Convention, Elbridge Gerry refused to sign the Constitution, because, among other things, it sanctioned the establishment of “a tribunal without juries,—a Star-Chamber as to civil cases.” [360] Many united in this opposition, and on the recommendation of the First Congress an additional safeguard was added in the following words: “In suits at Common Law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved.” Words cannot be more positive. ”

“ Rather, it seems to have been thought that summary power was necessary to preserve the dignity, independence, and effectiveness of the judicial process-'To submit the question of disobedience to another tribunal, be it a jury or another court, would operate to deprive the proceeding of half its efficiency.' In re Debs, 158 U.S. 564, 595, 15 S.Ct. ”

“ Every new tribunal erected for the decision of facts, without the intervention of a jury, is a step toward aristocracy, the most oppressive of absolute governments; and it is therefore a duty which every man owes to his country, his friends, his posterity, and himself, to maintain to the utmost of his power this valuable Constitution in all its rights, to restore it to its ancient dignity, if at all impaired ”

“ By whatsoever tribunal the prisoners may be tried, it is highly probable that many convictions will take place. Political offences, at least such as fall short of high treason, are so extremely vague and undefined, that tribunals predisposed to convict, will be satisfied with evidence of an equally lax and doubtful character. ”

“ However unimportant his claim might be, however little the community might be interested in its decision, the framers of our constitution thought it necessary for the purposes of justice, to provide a tribunal as superior to influence as possible, in which that claim might be decided. Can it be imagined, that the same persons considered a case involving the constitution of our country and the majesty of the laws, questions in which every American citizen must be deeply interested, as withdrawn from this tribunal, because a State is a party? ”

“ Those who deny the right of a jury to protect an individual in resisting an unjust law of the government, deny him all defence whatsoever against oppression. The right of revolution, which tyrants, in mockery, accord to mankind, is no legal right under a government; it is only a natural right to overturn a government. ”

“ When insurrection has swept away the judicial tribunals of a State as well as of the United States, the commanding general in the exercise of the war power had authority to organize a provisional court for the trial of civil as well as of criminal cases. And what if he does call it a Provost Court, provided he show, as he here is alleged by the other side to have done, that the court was meant to be one for the trial of civil causes also? The community must be saved from chaos, and courts are the means by which this end is attained. ”

“ It cannot be the Doge, for the State Inquisitors keep him in absolute bondage; nor would one naturally imagine that the nobles would relish this court, for the nobles are more exposed to the jealousy of the State Inquisitors than the citizens, or inferior people; and least of all ought [184] the citizens to support a Tribunal, to which none of them can ever be admitted. As, however, the body of the nobility alone can remove this Tribunal from being part of the constitution, and yet, we find, they have always supported it ”

“ Some barrier was needed between the powerful and the weak, and some tribunal before which the weak could accuse the powerful of their wrongs. This was supplied by the grand jury, which, ever changing its members and deliberating in secret, seemed well calculated to safeguard the people's liberties. But at present we need no such protection against a government of and by the people, and indeed such a body, deliberating secretly and hearing the evidence against an accused person without giving him the opportunity to be heard, seems strangely out of harmony with the spirit of our institutions. ”

“ No case has been cited in argument, and we think none can be found, in which the acts of a portion of a State unsuccessfully attempting to establish a separate revolutionary government have been sustained as a matter of legal right. As justly observed by the late Chief Justice in Shortridge & Co. v. Macon, decided at the circuit, and, in all material respects, like the one at bar, 'Those who engage in rebellion must consider the consequences. If they succeed, rebellion becomes revolution, and the new government will justify its founders. ”

“ It is doubtless true that inter arma leges silent, and in the throes of rebellion or revolution the processes of civil courts are of little avail, for the power of the courts rests on the general support of the people, and their recognition of the fact that peaceful remedies are the true resort for the correction of wrongs. But does not counsel's argument imply too much? Is it to be assumed that these defendants were conducting a rebellion or inaugurating a revolution, and that they and their associates were thus placing themselves beyond the reach of the civil process of the courts? ”

“ Moreover, in view of our heritage and the history of the adoption of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, it seems peculiarly anomalous to say that trial before a civilian judge and by an independent jury picked from the common citizenry is not a fundamental right. ”

“ This tribunal should be erected in order to replace for them the supreme tribunal of popular vengeance. It is very difficult to define a political crime, but if a man of the common people for his sort of misdeed gets punished at once, is it not necessary that extreme laws, something out of the common running of our social machinery, should be passed to terrify rebels and to strike the guilty? ”

“ Can it even for a second be supposed that a State which gives trial by Jury to the meanest, poorest, most helpless of its citizens, and concedes to the greatest criminals the right of appeal, could have debarred a body of reputable men from the ordinary rights of citizenship for so cynical a reason as that their numbers were small, their interests unjoined, their protests feeble? ”

“ The Constitution says “the trial of all crimes shall be by jury”—not all crimes except those involving contempt, but all crimes.
What power has been granted to this Congress to agree to any such proposal when it is in such complete contradiction to the Constitution? There is no power except the power of the people of this Nation by which the Constitution can be amended. The power of the people cannot be infringed upon by any lesser authority. ”

“ They threw their enemies into prison, erected a new tribunal for the punishment of crimes against the Revolution, and supplied it with a new and most efficient instrument which executed its victims painlessly, expeditiously, and on terms conforming to the precept of equality. ”

“ All of these institutions obviously symbolized a menace to liberty. In the hands of despotic groups each of them had become an instrument for the suppression of political and religious heresies in ruthless disregard of the right of an accused to a fair trial. Whatever other benefits the guarantee to an accused that his trial be conducted in public may confer upon our society, [24] the guarantee has always been recognized as a safeguard against any attempt to employ our courts as instruments of persecution. ”

“ Nothing can be more true, than that in our judicial capacity, we have a right to call for evidence at our bar, and to punish the witness if he does not appear. The whole body of the law supports us in this right. But, under the pretext of [72] privilege, to bring a man by force to the bar, when we have our remedy at law; to accuse, condemn, and punish that man, at the mere arbitrary will and pleasure of this House, not sitting as a court of justice, is tyranny in the abstract. It is against law; it is subversive of the constitution; it is incompetent to this House ”