Subversive Activities Control Board

“ And Congress has found that these action organizations employ methods of infiltration and secretive and coercive tactics; that by operating in concealment and through Communist-front organizations they are able to obtain the support of persons who would not extend such support knowing of their true nature; that a Communist network exists in the United States; and that the agents of communism have devised methods of sabotage and espionage carried out in successful evasion of existing law. ”

“ I realize that these laws are aimed only at the Communist Party. No one need console himself, however, that the policy of using governmental force to crush dissident groups upon which they are based can or will be stopped at that point. The weakening of constitutional safeguards in order to suppress one obnoxious group is a technique too easily available for the suppression of other obnoxious groups to expect its abandonment when the next generally hated group appears. ”

“ None of the consequences which attack to registration, whatever may be their validity when weighed separately in the constitutional balance, is so devoid of rational relation to the purposes of the Act as expressed in its second section that it appears a mere pressuring device meant to catch an organization between two fires. Section 2 recites that the world Communist movement, whose purpose is to employ deceit, secrecy, infiltration, and sabotage as means to establish a Communist totalitarian dictatorship, establishes and utilizes action organizations. ”

“ The only sense in which the Court has avoided a constitutional issue is by permitting the destruction of a group seeking to raise the issue of the constitutionality of its destruction. [23]
This whole Act, with its pains and penalties, embarks this country, for the first time, on the dangerous adventure of outlawing groups that preach doctrines nearly all Americans detest. When the practice of outlawing parties and various public groups begins, no one can say where it will end. In most countries such a practice once begun ends with a one-party government. ”

“ Let gentlemen look at certain papers printed in this city and elsewhere, and ask themselves whether an unwarrantable and dangerous combination does not exist to overturn and ruin the Government by publishing the most shameless falsehoods against the Representatives of the people of all denominations, that they are hostile to free Governments and genuine liberty, and of course to the welfare of this country; that they ought, therefore, to be displaced, and that the people ought to raise an insurrection against the Government. ”

“ This was because a vast majority of the American people were against the Party's policies and overwhelmingly rejected its candidates year after year. That is the true American way of securing this Nation against dangerous ideas. Of course that is not the way to protect the Nation against actions of violence and treason. The Founders drew a distinction in our Constitution which we would be wise to follow. They gave the Government the fullest power to prosecute overt actions in violation of valid laws but withheld any power to punish people for nothing more than advocacy of their views. ”

“ I think that among other things the Act is a bill of attainder; that it imposes cruel, unusual and savage punishments for thought, speech, writing, petition and assembly; and that it stigmatizes people for their beliefs, associations and views about politics, law, and government. The Act has borrowed the worst features of old laws intended to put shackles on the minds and bodies of men, to make them confess to crime, to make them miserable while in this country, and to make it a crime even to attempt to get out of it. ”

“ I am compelled to say in closing that I fear that all the arguments and urgings the Communists and their sympathizers can use in trying to convert Americans to an ideology wholly foreign to our habits and our instincts are far less dangerous to the security of this Nation than laws which embark us upon a policy of repression by the outlawry of minority parties because they advocate radical changes in the structure of Government. ”

“ The issue which the Communist Party tenders as one of construction of statutory language is more sharply drawn in the abstract sphere of words than in the realm of fact. It is true that the Court of Appeals compendiously expressed its understanding of the Party's conduct over a course of thirty years, as revealed by this record and as found by the Board, in terms of 'voluntary compliance.' Opposing this phrase, the Party insists that the statute demands 'enforceable control.' But neither of these verbalisms was used by Congress, and neither has an invariant content. ”

“ We do not find that the congressional assertions in § 2 (9) , (12) and (15) , that there exist in the United States individuals dedicated to communism, a 'Communist network,' a 'Communist movement,' and a Communist 'organization,' deprive the Party of the fair hearing which due process of law requires. Fairly read, these findings neither compel nor suggest the outcome in any particular litigations before the Board. ”

“ Organizations are subject to it only when shown, after administrative hearing subject to judicial review, to be dominated by the foreign power or its organs and to operate primarily to advance its purposes. That a portion of the evidence upon which such a showing is made may consist in the expression of political views by the organization does not alter the character of the Act or of the incidents to which it attaches. ”

“ The nature of the circumstances which bind an organization to unwavering compliance may be diverse. They may consist, of course, of the sort of enforceable power over the organization's members which an employer has over an employee-the power to compel obedience by threat of discharge. ”

“ Where individuals compile and sign the registration statement, as they must, it is the very making of the registration statement that will incriminate them, not the underlying documents.
Signing as an officer or director of the Communist Party-an ingredient of an offense that results in punishment-must be done under the mandate of law. That is compulsory incrimination of those individuals and, in my view, a plain violation of the Fifth Amendment. ”

“ In my view Congress can require full disclosure of all the paraphernalia through which a foreign dominated and controlled organization spreads propaganda, engages in agitation, or promotes politics in this country. ”

“ The contrary view, which Congress necessarily rejected in passing these laws, is that current public officials should never be granted power to use governmental force to keep people from hearing, speaking or publishing such criticisms of Government or from assembling together to petition their Government to make changes in governmental policies, however basic the majority may deem these policies to be. ”

“ Especially where Congress, in seeking to reconcile competing and urgently demanding values within our social institutions, legislates not to prohibit individuals from organizing for the effectuation of ends found to be menacing to the very existence of those institutions, but only to prescribe the conditions under which such organization is permitted, the legislative determination must be respected. ”

“ Second, a group engaged in lawful conduct may not be required to file with the Government a list of its members, no matter how unpopular it may be. For the disclosure of membership lists may cause harassment of members and seriously hamper their exercise of First Amendment rights. The more unpopular the group, the greater the likelihood of harassment. In logic then it might seem that the Communist Party, being at the low tide of popularity, might make out a better case of harassment than almost any other group on the contemporary scene. ”

“ The information elicited by the Act must be considered, not, as in the Viereck case, an aid to the exercise of individual judgment by the people, but rather a part of a pattern of suppression by the Government, for that is certainly the inevitable effect of any system that requires registration on the one hand and imposes pains and penalties upon those registering on the other. ”

“ The disclosure requirements are clear and specific. Now is the time to raise Fifth Amendment questions. To relegate the parties to another time and place in order to raise those constitutional objections is to fashion an extremely harsh rule to fit the Communist Party but no one else. Default means the risk of criminal prosecution. No person, I think, should be forced to wait until his default to raise his constitutional objection. ”

“ The question under that Amendment is whether Congress has power to outlaw an association, group or party either on the ground ta t it advocates a policy of violent overthrow of the existing Government at some time in the distant future or on the ground that it is ideologically subservient to some foreign country. In my judgment, neither of these factors justifies an invasion of rights protected by the First Amendment. Talk about the desirability of revolution has a long and honorable history, not only in other parts of the world, but also in our own country. ”