Opinion ID: 603512
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the bill of attainder clause in historical context

Text: 5 No bill of attainder ... shall be passed. U.S. Const. art. I, § 9, cl. 3. 6 An act of attainder may be defined to be an act of a legislative body deciding in a single case, upon mere arbitrary discretion, on the life and fortune of an individual--The very definition of the power shews of what an outrageous nature it is. No trial by jury, no certainty of defence, no security in innocence.... Justly has so despotic a power been rejected by our Constitution.... 7 Justice James Iredell, Charge to the Grand Jury of the Circuit Court for the District of New York, (Apr. 6, 1795), reprinted in 3 The Documentary History of the Supreme Court of the United States, 1789-1800, at 14, 15 (Maeva Marcus ed., 1990). 1 8 Under the common law of England, attainder was the immediate consequence of a sentence of death. 4 William Blackstone, Commentaries The judgment was said to fix a mark of infamy upon the person to be executed, who was then called attaint, attinctus [or] stained. Id. The effect of common law attainder was two-fold: forfeiture to the crown of real and personal property, id. at , and corruption of blood, which meant that the attainted person could neither inherit from his ancestors nor transmit his wealth or title to his heirs, id. at  381. The attainder that followed a sentence of death after trial is to be distinguished from the bill of attainder, a legislative enactment imposing punishment without trial. 9 The English Parliament first enacted bills of attainder around 1300. See Note, Bills of Attainder and the Supreme Court in 1960--Flemming v. Nestor, 1961 Wash.U.L.Q. 402, 403. The initial purpose of these bills was to ensure that the estates of dead traitors would escheat to the crown. See Michael P. Lehmann, The Bill of Attainder Doctrine: A Survey of the Decisional Law, 5 Hastings Const.L.Q. 767, 772 (1978). Later, bills of attainder were enacted to punish individuals for a variety of activities perceived to be contrary to the interests of the crown. See Comment, The Bounds of Legislative Specification: A Suggested Approach to the Bill of Attainder Clause, 72 Yale L.J. 330, 331 (1962). Parliament also enacted bills of pains and penalties, which were similar to bills of attainder but provided punishments other than death. Id. 10 The great Blackstone preferred to speak not of attainder, except as it existed in the common law: 11 As for acts of parliament to attaint particular persons of treason or felony, or to inflict pains and penalties, beyond or contrary to the common law, to serve a special purpose, I speak not of them; being to all intents and purposes new laws, made pro re nata, and by no means an execution of such as are already in being. 12 4 Blackstone, supra, at  256. 13 Indeed, the acts of Parliament to which Blackstone referred are not a part of the proud heritage of English law. As Joseph Story observed: 14 Bills of this sort have been most usually passed in England in times of rebellion, or of gross subserviency to the crown, or of violent political excitements; periods, in which all nations are most liable (as well the free, as the enslaved) to forget their duties, and to trample upon the rights and liberties of others. 15 Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States § 678, at 485 (Carolina Academic Press photo. reprint 1987) (abr. ed. 1833). 16 Bills of attainder found their way to colonial America, see Alison Reppy, The Spectre of Attainder in New York, 23 St. John's L.Rev. 1, 3-4 (1948) and, during the period of the American Revolution, bills of attainder or bills of pains and penalties directed at British loyalists were enacted in each of the thirteen colonies, see Raoul Berger, Bills of Attainder: A Study of Amendment by the Court, 63 Cornell L.Rev. 355, 376-79 (1978). Bills of attainder were not unknown in the new states. The New York Constitution, adopted on April 20, 1777, was typical. Although it prohibited the state legislature from enacting bills of attainder, it included an exception for crimes ... committed before the termination of the present war, see Reppy, supra, at 19. Complete corruption of blood was prohibited, however, even in the excepted cases. Id. Between the Declaration of Independence and the 1783 Treaty of Peace, approximately sixty pieces of attainder legislation were enacted in New York, including the Attainder Act of October 22, 1779, under which fifty-nine citizens were attainted, with consequent forfeiture of property. See id. at 17-35. 17 As a member of the Virginia legislature, Thomas Jefferson was involved in the adoption of legislation in 1778 to attaint one Josiah Phillips for hav[ing] levied war against this Commonwealth. Thomas Jefferson, Bill to Attaint Josiah Phillips, (May 28, 1778), reprinted in 3 The Founders' Constitution 345, 345 (Philip B. Kurland & Ralph Lerner eds., 1987). The enactment was unusual in that it required Phillips and his associates to present themselves for trial or else stand convicted of high treason and suffer the death penalty as well as forfeiture. Id. Jefferson replied somewhat testily to criticism of his role in the Phillips attainder, charging his critic with a diatribe against the abuse of bills of attainder and giving his own views as follows: 18 The occasion and proper office of a bill of attainder is this: When a person charged with a crime withdraws from justice, or resists it by force, ... no other means of bringing him to trial or punishment being practicable, a special act is passed by the legislature adapted to the particular case. This prescribes to him a sufficient time to appear and submit to a trial by his peers, declares that his refusal to appear shall be taken as a confession of guilt, as in the ordinary case of an offender at the bar refusing to plead, and pronounces the sentence which would have been rendered on his confession or conviction in a court of law. No doubt that these acts of attainder have been abused in England as instruments of vengeance by a successful over a defeated party. But what institution is insusceptible of abuse in wicked hands? 19 See Letter from Thomas Jefferson to L.H. Girardin (Mar. 12, 1815), in id. at 349, 349. Jefferson noted that Phillips ultimately was captured, indicted, tried by jury in the ordinary way, convicted and sentenced and executed under the common law; a course which every one approves, because the first object of the act of attainder was to bring him to fair trial. Id. Jefferson's definition of a bill of attainder was not, of course, the generally accepted one. 20 It seems obvious that the Framers were very much aware of English practices as well as the practices in the colonies and the states when they considered the matter of bills of attainder at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. The matter was brought forward in a single proposal for a constitutional provision prohibiting both bills of attainder and ex post facto laws. After the necessity for a provision proscribing ex post facto laws was challenged, according to records of the convention, 21 [t]he question [was] divided, [and] [t]he first part of the motion relating to bills of attainder was agreed to nem. contradicente. 22 Records of the Federal Convention, reprinted in id. at 347. The Constitution, as finally adopted, prohibited both the states and the federal government from passing bills of attainder. U.S. Const., art. I, §§ 9 & 10. 23 In the public relations campaign to secure ratification of the Constitution, James Madison wrote that [b]ills of Attainder ... are contrary to the first principles of the social compact and to every principle of sound legislation. The Federalist No. 44, at 282 (Clinton Rossiter ed., 1961). Madison quoted Montesquieu on the evils of imparting judicial powers to the legislative branch: Again: 'Were the power of judging joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary control, for the judge would then be the legislator.'  The Federalist No. 47, at 303. 24 The Supreme Court was confronted with a bill of attainder issue early on. In Cooper v. Telfair, 4 U.S. (4 Dall.) 14, 1 L.Ed. 721 (1800), the Court declined to declare void a 1782 Act of the Georgia legislature attainting British loyalists and confiscating their property. The Act was raised as a defense in an action to recover on a debt. Each participating Justice wrote a separate opinion, but Justice Samuel Chase conveyed the general tenor of the various opinions when he wrote that [t]here is ... a material difference between laws passed by the individual states, during the revolution, and laws passed subsequently to the organization of the federal constitution. Few of the revolutionary acts would stand the rigorous tests now applied.... Id. at 19. Although it was not necessary to the disposition of the case, which turned on the interpretation of the Contracts Clause, Chief Justice Marshall turned his attention to the office of a bill of attainder in Fletcher v. Peck, 10 U.S. (6 Cranch) 87, 138, 3 L.Ed. 162 (1810): A bill of attainder may affect the life of an individual, or may confiscate his property, or may do both. 25 The first significant Supreme Court decisions dealing with bills of attainder came in the wake of the Civil War and involved the so-called test oath statutes. The statute examined in Cummings v. Missouri, 71 U.S. (4 Wall.) 277, 18 L.Ed. 356 (1867), made it a criminal offense for a Catholic priest to practice his vocation without having sworn that he had not supported the Confederacy. In striking down the statute, the Court noted that a bill of attainder is a legislative act which inflicts punishment without a judicial trial. Id. at 323. The Court read the Bill of Attainder Clause broadly to prohibit bills of pains and penalties as well as bills of attainder, holding that the inhibition [of the Bill of Attainder Clause] was levelled at the thing, not the name. It intended that the rights of the citizen should be secure against deprivation for past conduct by legislative enactment, under any form, however disguised. Id. at 325. Ex Parte Garland, 71 U.S. (4 Wall.) 333, 374-81, 18 L.Ed. 366 (1867), decided on the same day as Cummings, struck down an Act of Congress that prohibited any person from holding office or practicing law who would not swear that he had not supported the Confederacy. The dissent, applying to both Cummings and Garland, pointedly noted what the Court had done in these two oath cases--extended the protection of the Bill of Attainder Clause to members of a class who were not the subject of criminal punishment: [a] statute ... which designates no criminal, either by name or description--which declares no guilt, pronounces no sentence, and inflicts no punishment--can in no sense be called a bill of attainder. Id. at 390 (Miller, J., dissenting). 26 Legislation influenced by the Cold War gave rise to more bill of attainder jurisprudence. In United States v. Lovett, 328 U.S. 303, 66 S.Ct. 1073, 90 L.Ed. 1252 (1946), the Supreme Court invalidated a statute preventing the payment of salaries to three federal employees believed to be subversive. The Court observed that the bill of attainder provisions of the Constitution proscribe any legislative act no matter what [its] form, that appl[ies] either to named individuals or to easily ascertainable members of a group in such a way as to inflict punishment on them without a judicial trial. Id. at 315, 66 S.Ct. at 1078. Noncriminal punishment is included. In United States v. Brown, 381 U.S. 437, 85 S.Ct. 1707, 14 L.Ed.2d 484 (1965), the Court invalidated a statute denying labor union employment to most members of the Communist Party. With regard to the punishment element, the Court noted that it had emphatically rejected the argument that the constitutional prohibition outlawed only a certain class of legislatively imposed penalties. Id. at 447-48, 85 S.Ct. at 1714. Also noted was the fact that the Bill of Attainder Clauses 27 reflected the Framers' belief that the Legislative Branch is not so well suited as politically independent judges and juries to the task of ruling upon the blameworthiness of, and levying appropriate punishment upon, specific persons. 28 Id. at 445, 85 S.Ct. at 1713. 29 The modern definition of punishment for bill of attainder purposes was established by the Supreme Court in connection with former President Richard Nixon's challenge to the Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservation Act, Pub.L. No. 93-526, §§ 101-106, 88 Stat. 1695, 1695-98 (1974). The Act provided that the Administrator of General Services take custody of Nixon's papers and tape recordings and promulgate regulations for access to the materials. Certain private papers of the former President were to be returned to him after screening by government archivists. See Nixon v. United States, 978 F.2d 1269, 1271-72 (D.C.Cir.1992) (describing in detail the legislative and regulatory scheme of the Act). In holding that the Act was not a bill of attainder, the Court applied three tests to determine whether legislative punishment of the type contemplated by the Bill of Attainder Clauses was imposed: the historical test, involving punishment traditionally judged to be prohibited by the Bill of Attainder Clause, Nixon v. Administrator of Gen. Servs., 433 U.S. 425, 475, 97 S.Ct. 2777, 2806, 53 L.Ed.2d 867 (1977), including death, imprisonment, banishment, punitive confiscation of property by the sovereign and, in more recent times, laws barring designated individuals or groups from participation in specified employments or vocations, id. at 474, 97 S.Ct. at 2806; the functional test, which analyz[es] whether the law under challenge, viewed in terms of the type and severity of burdens imposed, reasonably can be said to further nonpunitive legislative purposes, id. at 475-76, 97 S.Ct. at 2806-07; and the motivational test, which inquire[s] whether the legislative record evinces a congressional intent to punish, id. at 478, 97 S.Ct. at 2808. 30 Measured by the tests established, the Nixon Court found that the Act under scrutiny: did not fall within the historical definitions of punishment, including forfeiture, since there was a provision for an award of just compensation for any loss sustained, id. at 475, 97 S.Ct. at 2806; functioned to further nonpunitive legislative purposes, including the preservation of materials to complete prosecutions and the safeguarding of the public interest in access to materials of public importance, id. at 476-77, 97 S.Ct. at 2807; and demonstrated a motive to undo a certain agreement, the terms of which departed from the practice of former Presidents in that they expressly contemplated the destruction of certain Presidential materials, id. at 479, 97 S.Ct. at 2808, rather than a motive to punish. It is the tests established in Nixon that ultimately must be applied in the case at bar. See also Selective Serv. Sys. v. Minnesota Pub. Interest Research Group, 468 U.S. 841, 852, 104 S.Ct. 3348, 3355, 82 L.Ed.2d 632 (1984). 31