Opinion ID: 457052
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Origins of the Right of Association

Text: 49 From time immemorial, societies have been compelled to grapple with an individual's sense of anomie. Although each political order has adopted individuated solutions, every such effort--whether the Greek polis or the Roman civitas--has embraced the concept of association as a buffer between the individual and the state. 50 The history of American political thought reveals that the significance of voluntary association antedates the drafting of our Constitution. Before our ties with England were severed in 1776, Committees of Correspondence were established to provide speedy and direct channels for communication and enable the people to understand their interests and act in concert, and become effective arbiters of their own political destiny. H.R.Doc. No. 702, 57th Cong., 1st Sess. 245 (1902). There existed a variety of other nongovernmental organizations and associations that were close to the people and satisfied the myriad needs of our infant Republic. See R. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 186-96, 319-28 (1969); The Federalist No. 56 (J. Madison). 51 The importance of political association was fortified by and memorialized in the Constitution, which included provisions explicitly designed to protect political opposition, and accorded independent vitality by the First Congress, which expressly included the rights of free speech, assembly and petition in the text of the first amendment. Moreover, in the Federalist Papers, James Madison extolled voluntary private association as maximizing the opportunities for self-realization, and minimizing the dangers attendant to centralized power. See The Federalist No. 10, 57 (J. Cooke ed. 1961). The Madisonian link between freedom of association and true democracy became embedded in Western political thought, and was expressed eloquently by de Tocqueville: 52 In their political associations the Americans, of all conditions, minds, and ages, daily acquire a general taste for association and grow accustomed to the use of it. There they meet together in large numbers, they converse, they listen to one another, and they are mutually stimulated to all sorts of undertakings. They afterwards transfer to civil life the notions they have thus acquired and make them subservient to a thousand purposes. Thus it is by the enjoyment of a dangerous freedom that the Americans learn the act of rendering the dangers of freedom less formidable. 53 Democracy in America, supra, at 129. 54 The democracy envisioned by Madison and marvelled at by de Tocqueville, however, bears little resemblance to the realities that today prevail. The structure of American society has undergone a vast metamorphosis in the past two centuries. No longer is the individual the basic political or economic unit and, largely for that reason, the concept of eighteenth century democracy fails to explain the dynamics of our current socio-political system. In recent years, organizations--political, social and economic--have become the primary repositories of power. Like all liberties, the right of association must be defined, to a large extent, by reference to the contours of the existing socio-political landscape. 55 A corollary of our society's penchant for organization is that the association has achieved a prominence that could hardly have been imagined two centuries ago. 18 Indeed by the middle of this century, the voluntary association had become one of the linchpins of our democratic process. Yet, it had not been afforded constitutional protection in its own right. 19