Court Opinion

ID: 8805298
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-11-26 14:46:28.576327+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:04:04.398618
License: Public Domain

WARD, Circuit Judge
(concurring). I think the sole ground on which the order of the Postmaster General can be sustained is that some parts of the August number of The Masses were intended to obstruct and do obstruct the recruiting or enlistment service of the United States. This involves a conclusion of fact to be drawn by him from the cartoons and text of this particular number. Advice to resist the law may be indirect as well as direct, and the conclusion of the Postmaster General in matters of fact, whether we agree with him or not, is final. I think it important, however, to say that not every writing, the indirect effect of which is to discourage recruiting or enlistment, is within the statute. In addition to the natural effect of the language on the reader, the intention to discourage is essential. Arguments in favor of immediate peace, or in favor of repealing the Conscription Act, do this indirectly. It is, notwithstanding, the constitutional right of every citizen to express such opinions, both orally and in writing, and Congress cannot be presumed to have intended by the Espionage Act to authorize the Postmaster General to' exclude such articles, written honestly and without the intention of advising resistance to the law. His authority in the premises depends exclusively upon the statute, as was well stated by Mr. Justice Peckham in American Magnetic School of Healing v. McAnnulty, 187 U. S. 109, 23 Sup. Ct. 39, 47 L. Ed. 90.
“Here it is contended tliat the Postmaster General has, in a ease not covered by the acts of Congress, excluded from the mails letters addressed to the complainants.' His right to exclude letters, or to refuse to permit their delivery to persons addressed, must depend upon some law of Congress, and, if no such law exist, then he cannot exclude or refuse to deliver them. Conceding, arguendo, that when a question of fact arises, which, if found in ,one way, would show a violation of the statutes in question in some particular, the decision of the Postmaster General that such violation had occurred, based upon some evidence to that effect, would be conclusive and final, and not the subject of review by any court, yet to that assumption must be added the statement that if the evidence before the Postmaster General, in any view of the facts, failed to show a violation of any federal law, the determination of that official that such violation existed would not be the determination of a question of fact, but a pure mistake of law on his part, because the facts being conceded, whether they amounted to a violation of the statutes, would be a legal question and not a question of fact.”