Court Opinion

ID: 9419663
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:50:51.298121+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:42:12.313458
License: Public Domain

Mr. Chief Justice Stone,
dissenting.
Mr. Justice Reed, Mr. Justice Douglas, Mr. Justice Jackson and I think the judgment should be affirmed as *499to all the petitioners other than Schneller who is not shown to have participated in the conspiracy.
Petitioners were national and local leaders of the German American Bund, whose membership was made up of persons of German nationality or descent. They have been convicted of a conspiracy to violate § 11 of the Selective Service Act of 1940, 54 Stat. 885, which imposes a criminal penalty on any person “who knowingly counsels, aids, or abets another to evade registration or service in the land or naval forces.”
The indictments charge that petitioners and others conspired to distribute among the members of the Bund throughout the country a document known as Bund Order No. 37 “which would counsel, direct and urge those to whom the contents were made known that they should evade, resist, and refuse service in the land or naval forces of the United States.” Order No. 37 was ostensibly published as a protest of the Bund against the adoption by Congress of § 8 (i) as an amendment to the Selective Service Act, which declared:
“It is the expressed policy of the Congress that whenever a vacancy is caused in the employment rolls of any business or industry by reason of induction into the service of the United States of an employee pursuant to the provisions of this Act such vacancy shall not be filled by any person who is a member of the Communist Party or the German-American Bund.”
Order No. 37 was printed in the German language, and an English translation of it was submitted to the jury. After calling attention to the fact that all citizens who have not passed their thirty-sixth year were required by the Selective Service Act to register, it continued, “This order must be complied with unhesitatingly” and added:
“An induction into the military service is not justified, in as far as it concerns Bund members and American Ger*500mans, for in the Selective Service Law the citizenship rights of Bund members and the defenders of Germandom are unconstitutionally severed!”
It concluded:
“Every man, if he can, will refuse to do military duty until this law and all other laws of the country or the States which confine the citizenship rights of Bund members are revoked!
“We will fight to establish a precedent in this servile matter!”
The only substantial questions for our decision are whether the jury could rightly find from the evidence that Bund Order No. 37 did in fact counsel “another to evade registration or service in the land or naval forces,” and whether petitioners’ conspiracy to give such advice was in the circumstances unlawful. The contentions are that the conviction cannot be sustained because the advice in Bund Order No. 37, that “every man if he can will refuse to do military duty” until the law offensive to the Bund was repealed, cannot be taken to counsel the evasion of service in the military forces and because the alleged conspiracy was not unlawful since the Bund Order only coun-selled refusal to do military duty as a means of initiating a case to test the validity of § 8 (i) of the Selective Service Act, which is a lawful purpose.
There is abundant evidence showing a consistent purpose of the Bund and Bund members to promote in the United States the interests of Nazi Germany. It is not denied, and could not be, that there is ample evidence from which the jury could have found that the Bund members, and petitioners in particular, were opposed to war with Germany and hostile to the Selective Service legislation of 1940 because they wished to prevent the raising of an army for a war against Germany. It was the theory of the Government, in presenting its case, that respondents seized upon the proposed legislation, which *501became § 8 (i) of the Selective Service Act of 1940, as the ready implement of propaganda and agitation among Bund members and their friends, as a means of hindering and delaying the drafting of an army to fight against Germany. The Government’s position is that Bund Order No. 37, which petitioners diligently circulated among Bund members, was the product of the conspiracy, and the means by which petitioners counselled members to evade service in the armed forces.
It seems to be admitted, and indeed it cannot be denied, that the evidence gives support to the Government’s contention that petitioners had the inclination and the purpose to persuade Bund members to obstruct the operation of the Selective Service Act, and that Bund Order No. 37 was their chosen means to accomplish that end. But it is insisted that the advice to “refuse to do military duty,” given by the distribution of Bund Order No. 37 among Bund members of draft age, was not an incitement to “evade” military service which the statute proscribes. Appealing to the dictionary as the ultimate arbiter of the statutory construction, it is said that “evade” connotes conduct which is fraudulent or characterized by artifice or craft, and suggests the idea of “escaping or slipping away from” as opposed to resistance to or refusal to do military duty, which the Bund order counselled.
If the meaning which the dictionary ascribes to a word standing in isolation is to be deemed controlling in the construction of a statute in which the word appears, it would seem to be of some importance to refer to the Latin derivation of the word “evade” as meaning to go or proceed away from, and to its modern usage, also recognized by the dictionaries, as the synonym of “avoid,” or “escape” by effort or by force or by any other means, as well as by artifice, craft or dexterity.1 As the draftsmen *502of statutes do not usually limit the application of the chosen word to only some of its common meanings without indicating their purpose to do so, the word, read in its context in the statute, is far more revealing of the legislative purpose than the arbitrary selection of one of its dictionary meanings to the exclusion of others which are equally applicable.
Here the statute shows on its face that the word “evade” is used in § 11 as meaning avoidance of or escape from military service either by the failure or the refusal to pérform a duty which would otherwise result in the performance of the service, or by means of fraud, craft, or artifice, in meeting the requirements of the Selective Service Act. Section 11 imposes criminal penalties upon any person “charged . . . with the duty of carrying out any of the provisions of this Act . . . who shall knowingly fail or neglect to perform such duty.” But it also imposes penalties upon any such person “who shall knowingly make, or be a party to the making, of any false, improper, or incorrect registration, classification . . . and any person who shall knowingly make, or be a party to the making of, any false statement or certificate . . .” It then provides for a like application of the Act to any person “who otherwise evades registration or service in the land or naval forces or any of the requirements of this Act, or who knowingly counsels, aids, or abets another to evade registration or service in the land or naval *503forces or any of the requirements of this Act.” (Italics supplied.)
The implication from the use of the phrase “otherwise evades” is plain that the acts of omission or refusal to perform the prescribed duty and acts of ostensible performance by false statements and the like are equally recognized by the statute as modes of evasion of military service or of other requirements of the Act. It is thus clear that the phrase “otherwise evades” was intended to include both types of evasion whether effected by breaches of duty or by false' fraudulent and deceptive acts, either of which, if successful, would result in avoidance of or escape from military service. In addition to all these modes of evasion § 11 penalizes one who otherwise (by any other mode) evades (avoids) service. Thus, on the face of the statute there is no basis for saying that respondents can elude its penalties because they counselled Bund members to evade, i. e., escape or avoid, military service by refusing to perform military duty rather than by false statements, artifices, or stratagem. There is no occasion for giving the word “evade,” as used in the statute, a more strained or a narrower meaning than is recognized in its context in § 11, which is also identical with the dictionary definitions.
Such legislative history as there is supports this conclusion. Senator Burke, one of the authors of the bill which became the Selective Service Act of 1940, at the hearings on the bill before the Senate Committee on Military Affairs, stated that the provision of § 11 prohibiting the counselling of evasion, applied “where one urged another not to seek repeal of the law but to refuse to obey it while it remained the law.” Hearings, Senate Committee on Military Affairs, 76th Cong., 3rd Sess., p. 156. Section 11 was derived from § 6 of the Selective Draft Act of 1917, 40 Stat. 80, which penalized any person who “evades or aids another to evade the requirements of this Act.” In *504Fraina v. United States, 255 F. 28, Fraina was indicted under §§37 and 332 of the Criminal Code and of § 6 of the Selective Service Act of 1917 for conspiracy with others to “counsel . . . induce . . . divers persons ... to evade . . . the requirements of” the Selective Service Act. The Court affirmed a conviction where the jury found that the accused made a speech in order to counsel and induce certain “conscientious objectors” “to refuse to be bound, or refuse to act or accept the law, and refuse to do their duty which is required by this law.” Thus, before the adoption of the present Selective Service Act, it was judicially determined that one who refuses to comply with the requirements of the law “evades” the law, and that one who counsels another to refuse to accept the law or to do his duty which is required by the law can be found guilty of inducing him to evade it. We must take it that Congress, in adopting the term “evade” from § 6 of the earlier draft act, and using it in like context in § 11 of the 1940 Act, adopted and confirmed the judicial construction of the term as it appeared in the 1917 Act. Sessions v. Romadka, 145 U. S. 29, 41-42; Manhattan Properties v. Irving Trust Co., 291 U. S. 320, 336; United States v. Elgin, J. & E. R. Co., 298 U. S. 492, 500; Missouri v. Ross, 299 U. S. 72, 75; Electric Battery Co. v. Shimadzu, 307 U. S. 5, 14.
The conclusion seems inescapable that petitioners, by counselling Bund members to refuse to do military duty, counselled evasion of military service, and that the jury’s verdict of violation of § 11 is therefore sustained by the evidence. This is not any the less so because the Bund order counselled members of the Bund to refuse to do military service until § 8 (i) was repealed. Bund Order No. 37 was published and distributed by petitioners after the enactment of § 8 (i) of the Act. Its counsel therefore was to violate the statute by evading military service, notwithstanding the order’s suggestion that the refusal to do military duty might cease whenever repeal occurred.
*505The trial judge instructed the jury, rightly we think, that “bona fide honest intent to make a test case is no defense,” saying: “If there was a conspiracy amongst these defendants, or any of them, having as its object the violation of the Selective Service Law, knowingly, the reason for such violation is immaterial to you in your consideration of the question of their guilt or innocence.” Plainly one who would assail the validity of a statute in a test case can do so only by violating its provisions, here by knowingly counselling another to evade registration or service in the armed forces. One who thus evaded or counselled evasion of military service could not defend on the ground that he violated the Act in order to test its constitutionality. He nevertheless does the act which the statute prohibits and nonetheless intended to do it even though his purpose was to establish that the statutory prohibition is unconstitutional. There is no freedom to conspire to violate a statute with impunity merely because its constitutionality is doubted. The prohibition of the statute is infringed by the intended act in any case, and the law imposes its sanctions unless the doubt proves to be well founded.
Here petitioners laid no foundation for assailing the validity of § 11 by reason of their doubts of the constitutionality of § 8 (i). No one can urge the unconstitutionality of a statute until he shows that it is applicable to him and that he is injured by it. Marye v. Parsons, 114 U. S. 325; Tyler v. The Judges, 179 U. S. 405; Collins v. Texas, 223 U. S. 288; Roberts & Schaefer Co. v. Emmerson, 271 U. S. 50, 54, 55; Utah Power Co. v. Pfost, 286 U. S. 165; Ashwander v. Tennessee Valley Authority, 297 U. S. 288, 324; Voeller v. Neilston Co., 311 U. S. 531, 537; Alabama State Federation of Labor v. McAdory, ante, p. 450. Petitioners introduced no evidence. It does not appear that any of them ever gave up any employment because of their induction into the service of the United States pur*506suant to the Selective Service Act, or that they were ever refused or threatened with refusal of any employment because of their membership in the Bund or the Communist Party. And even though § 8 (i) were to be deemed unconstitutional as applied to petitioners, that would not affect the constitutionality of § 11 or relieve petitioners from the consequences of their violation of § 11. For § 14 (b) of the Act provides “If any provision of this Act, or the application thereof to any person or circumstance, is held invalid, the remainder of the Act, and the application of such provision to other persons or circumstances, shall not be affected thereby.”
The doctrine of People v. Powell, 63 N. Y. 88, on which petitioners rely, that a criminal conspiracy to do an act “innocent in itself” not known by the conspirators to be prohibited must be actuated by some corrupt motive other than the intention to do the act which is prohibited and which is the object of the conspiracy, has never been accepted by this Court. To establish violation of § 11 nothing more need be proved than that respondents had in contemplation all the elements of the offense which they conspired to commit. United States v. Mack, 112 F. 2d 290, 292; cf. Hamburg-American Steam Packet Co. v. United States, 250 F. 747, 759; Chadwick v. United States, 141 F. 225, 243. There is no contention that petitioners did not know that the Selective Service Act required those subject to it to do military service. And People v. Powell, supra, was careful to point out that where the conspiracy is to do an act which is not “innocent in itself” the offense is “complete when the act is intentionally done,” irrespective of any actual intention to violate the law. Here the act prohibited was hardly “innocent in itself.” The facts found by the jury under instructions of the court constitute plain violation of § 11, and the jury’s verdict is supported by the evidence.

 The following are dictionary definitions of the word “evade”: Funk & Wagnalls: “To avoid by artifice; elude or get away from by *502craft or force; save oneself from, as an impending evil; as, to evade an argument or a crisis.” Webster: “To escape; to slip away ... to get away from by artifice; to avoid by dexterity, subterfuge or ingenuity ... to escape or avoid, often by the use of skill, dexterity, or contrivance.” Oxford: “To escape by contrivance or artifice from ... to avoid, save oneself from ... to elude. Nonce-use: ‘go out of. Opposed to invade.' ” Century: “To avoid by effort or contrivance; escape from or elude in any way, as by dexterity, artifice, stratagem or address; slip away from; get out of the way of ... to escape; slip away.”