Court Opinion

ID: 9424433
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:11:37.204339+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:50.293812
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Blackmun,
with whom The Chief Justice, Mr. Justice Harlan, and Mr. Justice White join, dissenting.
This case, also argued here for the second time, presents another instance of a well-educated (academic degree from the University of Rochester; law degree from New York University) and obviously able young person who seeks admission to the Bar, but, to an extent at least, upon his own terms. His case is made the more acute and appealing because he already has been admitted to practice in the State of New York but now finds himself thwarted in a like endeavor in Ohio. The decisions in Konigsberg v. State Bar, 366 U. S. 36 (1961), and In re Anastaplo, 366 U. S. 82 (1961), are again challenged.
*32The plurality opinion has set forth the pertinent questions asked of Martin Robert Stolar, when he sought admission to the New York Bar in 1968, and Stolar’s answers to those questions. At that time he was willing to go so far as specifically to profess even his belief in the principles underlying the form of government of the United States and his loyalty to that government, and also, just as specifically, to go so far as to deny that he was, or ever had been, a member of any party or organization pledged to effect changes in the form of our government or engaged in advancing the interest of a foreign country. The propriety of these very questions, which Stolar answered apparently without hesitation in New York in 1968, was seriously questioned subsequently in Law Students Civil Rights Research Council v. Wadmond, 299 P. Supp. 117, 130 (SDNY 1969), now affirmed, post, p. 154.
In 1969, in Ohio, Stolar apparently again had no hesitation in professing at oral interview that he was not, and never had been, a member of the Communist Party. But, although the one seems to include the other, he flatly refused, on stated Fifth Amendment grounds, to say (Question 12 (g)) whether he was or had been a member of any organization which advocates the overthrow of the Government of the United States by force. He also refused, on Fifth Amendment grounds, to list (Questions 13 and 7) organizations of which he was or had been a member.
I may assume, for present purposes, that the general and broadly phrased list-your-organizations inquiries, that is, Questions 13 and 7, are improper and impermissible under the Court’s holding, by another five-to-four vote, in Shelton v. Tucker, 364 U. S. 479 (1960), despite the presence of what seems to me to be a somewhat significant difference between nontenured school teachers and about-to-be-licensed attorneys. This assumption, *33however, does not terminate Stolar’s case, for Question 12 (g), with its specific inquiry about membership in organizations advocating overthrow by force, remains to be considered.
My position with respect to a refusal to respond to a question such as Question 12 (g) is set forth in my dissent in Baird v. State Bar of Arizona, ante, p. 11, and needs no detailed repetition here. I note only (a) the inconsistency of Stolar’s willingness to respond orally and his unwillingness to respond in writing, and (b) that, here again, membership, present or past, in an organization of the kind specified, although relevant in the Bar admission context, in and of itself is not conclusive upon the issue of admission to the Bar. Ohio concedes, as Arizona did in Baird, that the significance lies in something more than mere membership.
Neither am I content with the conclusion reached in the plurality opinion that Stolar’s responses to New York in 1968 should suffice for responses to Ohio in 1969. That kind of reasoning would compel one to conclude that because an applicant is admitted to the Bar of one State, he surely must be admitted to the Bar of any other State. We might reach that frontier one day on some new and as yet undeveloped constitutional concept, but I doubt whether we have reached it yet. New York’s range of inquiry and her area of particular interest may very well differ from Ohio’s, and each may be constitutionally permissible. Further, an answer true in 1968 may not be true at all in 1969. Time passes and changes can take place even within a few months.
Although I readily concede that the Ohio question (just as the Arizona question in Baird) could have been better phrased, the approach of the plurality for reversal to the inquiry is, I feel, somewhat unrealistic. As in Baird, and as noted above, it is not a mere question of membership present or past. It is a question of knowing *34membership and of willingness to participate in the forceful destruction of government. This is the crux. To forestall inquiry at the threshold stultifies Ohio's appropriate concern as to faithful adherence to a lawyer's trust when the State is about to vest great professional and fiduciary power in those who seek entrance to the Bar.
On this record, I would affirm.