Source: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0341_0494_ZC.html
Timestamp: 2013-05-23 08:09:20
Document Index: 162504572

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 7', '§ 5', 'art 2', '§ 19', '§ 155', '§ 137', '§ 305', '§ 705', '§ 9', '§ 118', '§ 2386', '§ 9', '§ 159', '§ 7']

Just as there are those who regard as invulnerable every measure for which the claim of national survival is invoked, there are those who find in the Constitution a wholly unfettered right of expression. Such literalness treats the words of the Constitution as though they were found on a piece of outworn parchment instead of being words that have called into being a nation with a past to be preserved for the future. The soil in which the Bill of Rights grew was not a soil of arid pedantry. The historic antecedents of the First Amendment preclude the notion that its purpose was to give unqualified immunity to every expression that touched on matters within the range of political interest. The Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 guaranteed free speech; yet there are records of at least three convictions for political libels obtained between 1799 and 1803. [n1] The Pennsylvania Constitution of 1790 and the Delaware Constitution of 1792 expressly imposed liability for abuse of the right of free speech. [n2] Madison's own State put on its books in 1792 a statute confining the abusive exercise of the right of utterance. [n3] And it deserves to be noted that, in writing to John Adams' wife, Jefferson did not rest his condemnation of the Sedition Act of 1798 on his belief in [p522] unrestrained utterance as to political matter. The First Amendment, he argued, reflected a limitation upon Federal power, leaving the right to enforce restrictions on speech to the States. [n4] [p523]
Robertson v. Baldwin, 165 U.S. 275, 281. That this represents the authentic view of the Bill of Rights and the spirit in which it must be construed has been recognized again and again in cases that have come here within the last fifty years. See, e.g., Gompers v. United States, 233 U.S. 604, 610. Absolute rules would inevitably lead to absolute exceptions, and such exceptions would eventually corrode the rules. [n5] The demands of free speech in a democratic society, as well as the interest [p525] in national security are better served by candid and informed weighing of the competing interests, within the confines of the judicial process, than by announcing dogmas too inflexible for the non-Euclidian problems to be solved.
The precise meaning intended to be conveyed by these phrases need not now be pursued. It is enough to note that they have recurred in the Court's opinions, and their cumulative force has, not without justification, engendered belief that there is a constitutional principle, expressed by those attractive but imprecise words, prohibiting restriction upon utterance unless it creates a situation of "imminent" peril against which legislation may guard. [n6] It is on this body of the Court's pronouncements that the defendants' argument here is based.
We have recognized and resolved conflicts between speech and competing interests in six different types of cases. [n7]
339 U.S. at 400. On balance, we decided that the legislative judgment was a permissible one. [n8]
268 U.S. at 672-673. Since the Manifesto circulated by Gitlow "had no chance of starting a present conflagration," 268 U.S. at 673, they dissented from the affirmance of his conviction. In Whitney v. California, they concurred in the result reached by the Court, but only because the record contained some evidence that organization of the Communist Labor Party might further a conspiracy to commit immediate serious crimes, and the credibility of the evidence was not put in issue by the defendant. [n9]
Of greater importance is the fact that the issue of law which divided the Court in the Gitlow and Whitney cases has not again been clearly raised, although in four additional instances we have reviewed convictions under comparable statutes. Fiske v. Kansas, 274 U.S. 380, involved a criminal syndicalism statute similar to that before us in Whitney v. California. We reversed a conviction based on evidence that the defendant exhibited an innocuous preamble to the constitution of the Industrial Workers of the World in soliciting members for that organization. In Herndon v. Lowry, 301 U.S. 242, the defendant had solicited members for the Communist Party, but there was no proof that he had urged or even approved those of the Party's aims which were unlawful. We reversed a conviction obtained under a statute prohibiting an attempt to incite to insurrection by violence on the ground that the Fourteenth Amendment prohibited conviction where, on the evidence, a jury could not reasonably infer that the defendant had violated the statute the State sought to apply. [n10] [p539]
In 1947, it has been reliably reported, at least 60,000 members were enrolled in the Party. [n11] Evidence was introduced in this case that the membership was organized in small units, linked by an intricate chain of command, and protected by elaborate precautions designed to prevent disclosure of individual identity. There are no reliable data tracing acts of sabotage or espionage directly to these defendants. But a Canadian Royal Commission appointed in 1946 to investigate espionage reported that it was "overwhelmingly established" that [p548] "the Communist movement was the principal base within which the espionage network was recruited." [n12] The most notorious spy in recent history was led into the service of the Soviet Union through Communist indoctrination. [n13] Evidence supports the conclusion that members of the Party seek and occupy positions of importance in political and labor organizations. [n14] Congress was not barred by the Constitution from believing that indifference to such experience would be an exercise not of freedom, but of irresponsibility.
It is not for us to decide how we would adjust the clash of interests which this case presents were the primary responsibility for reconciling it ours. Congress has determined that the danger created by advocacy of overthrow justifies the ensuing restriction on freedom of speech. The determination was made after due deliberation, and [p551] the seriousness of the congressional purpose is attested by the volume of legislation passed to effectuate the same ends. [n15]
The wisdom of the assumptions underlying the legislation and prosecution is another matter. In finding that Congress has acted within its power, a judge does not remotely imply that he favors the implications that lie beneath the legal issues. Considerations there enter which go beyond the criteria that are binding upon judges within the narrow confines of their legitimate authority. The legislation we are here considering is but a truncated aspect of a deeper issue. For me, it has been most illuminatingly expressed by one in whom responsibility and experience have fructified native insight, the Director-General of the British Broadcasting Corporation: We have to face up to the fact that there are powerful forces in the world today misusing the privileges of liberty in order to destroy her. The question must be asked, however, whether suppression of information or opinion is the true defense. We may have come a long way from Mill's famous dictum that: If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind,
APPENDIX TO OPINION OF MR. JUSTICE FRANKFURTER.Opinions responsible for the view that speech could not constitutionally be restricted unless there would result from it an imminent -- i.e., close at hand -- substantive evil.
. . . [T]he "clear and present danger" language of the Schenck case has afforded practical guidance in a great variety of cases in which the scope of constitutional protections of freedom of expression was in issue. It has been utilized by either a majority or minority of this Court in passing upon the constitutionality of convictions under espionage acts, Schenck v. United States, supra, [249 U.S. 47]; Abrams v. United States, 250 U.S. 616; under a criminal syndicalism act, Whitney v. California, supra, [274 U.S. 357]; under an "anti-insurrection" act, Herndon v. Lowry, supra, [301 U.S. 242], and for breach of the peace at common law, Cantwell v. Connecticut, supra, [310 U.S. 296]. And, very recently, we have also suggested that "clear and present danger" is an appropriate guide in determining the constitutionality of restrictions upon expression where the substantive evil sought to be prevented [p558] by the restriction is "destruction of life or property, or invasion of the right of privacy." Thornhill v. Alabama, 310 U.S. 88, 105.
Speech is often provocative and challenging. It may strike at prejudices and preconceptions and have profound unsettling effects as it presses for acceptance of an idea. That is why freedom of speech, though not absolute, Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, supra, [315 U.S. 568,] 571-572, is nevertheless protected against censorship or punishment unless shown likely to produce a clear and present danger of a serious substantive evil that rises far above public inconvenience, annoyance, or unrest. See Bridges v. California, 314 U.S. 252, 262; Craig v. Harney, 331 U.S. 367, 373. There is no room under our Constitution for a more restrictive view. For the alternative would lead to standardization of ideas either by legislatures, courts, or dominant political or community groups.
1. Mass.Const., 1780, Part I, Art. XVI. See Duniway, Freedom of the Press in Massachusetts, 144-146.
2. Pa.Const., 1790, Art. IX, § 7; Del.Const., 1792, Art. I, § 5.
3. The General Assembly of Virginia passed a statute on December 26, 1792, directed at establishment of
4. In a letter to Abigail Adams, dated September 11, 1804, Jefferson said with reference to the Sedition Act: Nor does the opinion of the unconstitutionality and consequent nullity of that law remove all restraint from the overwhelming torrent of slander which is confounding all vice and virtue, all truth and falsehood in the US. The power to do that is fully possessed by the several state legislatures. It was reserved to them, and was denied to the general government, by the constitution according to our construction of it. While we deny that Congress have a right to controul the freedom of the press, we have ever asserted the right of the states, and their exclusive right, to do so.
The Sedition Act of July 14, 1798, was directed at two types of conduct. Section 1 made it a criminal offense to conspire "to impede the operation of any law of the United States," and to "counsel, advise or attempt to procure any insurrection, riot, unlawful assembly, or combination." Section 2 provided: That if any person shall write, print, utter or publish, or shall cause or procure to be written, printed, uttered or published, or shall knowingly and willingly assist or aid in writing, printing, uttering or publishing any false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings against the government of the United States, or either house of the Congress of the United States, or the President of the United States, with intent to defame the said government, or either house of the said Congress, or the said President, or to bring them, or either of them, into contempt or disrepute; or to excite against them, or either or any of them, the hatred of the good people of the United States, or to stir up sedition within the United States, or to excite any unlawful combinations therein, for opposing or resisting any law of the United States, or any act of the President of the United States, done in pursuance of any such law, or of the powers in him vested by the constitution of the United States, or to resist, oppose, or defeat any such law or act, or to aid, encourage or abet any hostile designs of any foreign nation against the United States, their people or government, then such person, being thereof convicted before any court of the United States having jurisdiction thereof, shall be punished by a fine not exceeding two thousand dollars, and by imprisonment not exceeding two years.
5. Professor Alexander Meiklejohn is a leading exponent of the absolutist interpretation of the First Amendment. Recognizing that certain forms of speech require regulation, he excludes those forms of expression entirely from the protection accorded by the Amendment.
6. In Hartzel v. United States, 322 U.S. 680, 687, the Court reversed a conviction for willfully causing insubordination in the military forces on the ground that the intent required by the statute was not shown. It added that there was a second element necessary to conviction,
7. No useful purpose would be served by considering here decisions in which the Court treated the challenged regulation as though it imposed no real restraint on speech or on the press. E.g., Associated Press v. Labor Board, 301 U.S. 103; Valentine v. Chrestensen, 316 U.S. 52; Railway Express Agency v. New York, 336 U.S. 106; Lewis Publishing Co. v. Morgan, 229 U.S. 288. We recognized that restrictions on speech were involved in United States ex rel. Milwaukee Publishing Co. v. Burleson, 255 U.S. 407, and Gilbert v. Minnesota, 254 U.S. 325; but the decisions raised issues so different from those presented here that they too need not be considered in detail. Our decisions in Stromberg v. California, 283 U.S. 359, and Winters v. New York, 333 U.S. 507, turned on the indefiniteness of the statutes.
8. The Taft-Hartley Act also requires that an officer of a union using the services of the National Labor Relations Board take oath that he
9. Burns v. United States, 274 U.S. 328, adds nothing to the decision in Whitney v. California.
10. In Herndon v. Georgia, 295 U.S. 441, the opinion of the Court was concerned solely with a question of procedure. Mr. Justice Brandeis, Mr. Justice Stone, and Mr. Justice Cardozo, however, thought that the problem of Gitlow v. New York was raised. See 295 U.S. at 446.
11. See the testimony of the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Hearings before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, on H.R. 1884 and H.R. 2122, 80th Cong., 1st Sess., Part 2, p. 37.
12. Report of the Royal Commission to Investigate Communication of Secret and Confidential Information to Agents of a Foreign Power, June 27, 1946, p. 44. There appears to be little reliable evidence demonstrating directly that the Communist Party in this country has recruited persons willing to engage in espionage or other unlawful activity on behalf of the Soviet Union. The defection of a Soviet diplomatic employee, however, led to a careful investigation of an espionage network in Canada, and has disclosed the effectiveness of the Canadian Communist Party in conditioning its members to disclose to Soviet agents vital information of a secret character. According to the Report of the Royal Commission investigating the network, conspiratorial characteristics of the Party similar to those shown in the evidence now before us were instrumental in developing the necessary motivation to cooperate in the espionage. See pp. 43-83 of the Report.
13. The Communist background of Dr. Klaus Fuchs was brought out in the proceedings against him. See The [London] Times, Mar. 2, 1950, p.2, col. 6.
14. See American Communications Assn. v. Douds, 339 U.S. 382. Former Senator Robert M. La Follette, Jr., has reported his experience with infiltration of Communist sympathizers into congressional committee staffs. Collier's, Feb. 8, 1947, p. 22.
15. Immigration laws require, for instance, exclusion and deportation of aliens who advocate the overthrow of the Government by force and violence, and declare ineligible for naturalization aliens who are members of organizations so advocating. Act of Feb. 5, 1917, § 19, 39 Stat. 889, 8 U.S.C. § 155; Act of Oct. 16, 1918, 40 Stat. 1012, 8 U.S.C. § 137; Act of Oct. 14, 1940, § 305, 54 Stat. 1141, 8 U.S.C. § 705. The Hatch Act prohibits employment by any Government agency of members of organizations advocating overthrow of "our constitutional form of government." Act of Aug. 2, 1939, § 9A, 53 Stat. 1148, 5 U.S.C. (Supp. III) § 118j. The Voorhis Act of Oct. 17, 1940, was passed to require registration of organizations subject to foreign control which engage in political activity. 54 Stat. 1201, 18 U.S.C. § 2386. The Taft-Hartley Act contains a section designed to exclude Communists from positions of leadership in labor organizations. Act of June 23, 1947, § 9(h), 61 Stat. 146, 29 U.S.C. (Supp. III) § 159(h). And, most recently, the McCarran Act requires registration of "Communist action" and "Communist front" organizations. Act of Sept. 23, 1950, § 7, 64 Stat. 987, 993.