Court Opinion

ID: 9551193
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:49:10.600108+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:23:16.477053
License: Public Domain

Finley, J.
(concurring) — History is replete with evidence that loyalty oaths can be a most dubious device in terms of the commonweal. Apparently, as often as not, they have been used or abused as instruments of oppression in situations of plain power politics. The implicit purpose of those founding fathers who drafted the United States Constitution and our state constitutions was to structure a system of government and social justice which, abjuring violence, would promote the safety and security of citizens in their *543homes in a manner conducive to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Toward this end, the framers of the United States Constitution, article 2, section 1, prescribed an oath of office for the President as follows:
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
Similarly, the framers of the state constitution required an oath by judges to support the constitutions and laws of the United States and of the State of Washington. Const, art. 4, § 28. Furthermore, I think our citizenry seem to place a value and derive some solace from the requirement of such oaths. As a consequence, in my judgment, it is not for the courts to gainsay historical precedent and the feelings and faith of the people by an assumed judicial clairvoyancy that any and all oaths for candidates for public office are improper because some loyalty oaths have been misused by political forces exercising extremes of power for an oppressive but transient period of time in history.
It is, I believe, incumbent upon the courts to carefully and objectively evaluate the constitutional validity of any loyalty oath submitted for judicial consideration. This, the United States Supreme Court has cautiously and meticulously done.
Over the past decade, the court has developed certain guidelines or rules of construction, as well as a body of substantive law interpreting particular terms and phrases which have frequently appeared in loyalty oaths. In Bag-gett v. Bullitt, 377 U.S. 360, 12 L. Ed. 2d 377, 84 S. Ct. 1316 (1964), the court indicated that the term “revolution”, appearing in a loyalty oath, was suspect and would not pass constitutional muster unless clearly it related to and proscribed the overthrow of government by means of force and violence. In considering the language of the loyalty oath before it, the court deemed it proper to indulge “every presumption of a narrow construction” of proscriptive language. Baggett v. Bullitt, supra at 372. That same year, in *544Aptheker v. Secretary of State, 378 U.S. 500, 12 L. Ed. 2d 992, 84 S. Ct. 1659 (1964), the court warned against legislative enactments which invade the area of freedoms protected by the First Amendment, indicating that although it is permissible to construe legislation to preserve it against constitutional attack, the courts must not pervert the purpose of the statute by judicial construction. In 1967, the court reviewed the term “advocate” in Keyishian v. Board of Regents, 385 U.S. 589, 17 L. Ed. 2d 629, 87 S. Ct. 675 (1967) as it appeared in a loyalty oath. In ruling that the mere abstract advocacy of a proscribed doctrine without any attempt to indoctrinate others constitutes a legitimate personal liberty, the court clarified and distinguished impermissible and constitutionally unprotected advocacy as active incitement of others “to action in furtherance of unlawful aims.” Keyishian v. Board of Regents, supra at 599-600. This construction of the term “advocate” was affirmed and further elaborated upon in Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444, 447, 23 L. Ed. 2d 430, 89 S. Ct. 1827 (1969), where the court held the following:
[T]he constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.
(Italics mine.) In summary, the court has consistently ruled that violence to life, limb or property, and the incitement thereto, may be proscribed by loyalty oath. Mindful of the development of the law in this area, it was in this context of proscribing active or imminent violence as the means for alteration, overthrow and destruction of government that this court initially reviewed and dismissed by an emergent order the instant challenge to the Washington candidate loyalty oath. Given the judicial prerogative — if not duty — to construe this loyalty oath as consistent with constitutional limitations, I was and still am convinced that the immediate oath does not exceed constitutional bounds *545in its proscription of activity which involves, or is imminently related to, force and violence inimical to public safety, and domestic tranquility.
It is well settled that not all human conduct involving vocalization or other forms of speech is purified beyond the pale of proscriptive law by the First Amendment. Incitement to imminent violence, riot, or unlawful activity, as specifically proscribed in Brandenburg, receives no protection from the First Amendment. See, e.g., Feiner v. New York, 340 U.S. 315, 95 L. Ed. 295, 71 S. Ct. 303 (1951) (incitement to riot). In fact, the constitution affords no shield for violent demonstrations (see, e.g., Adderly v. Florida, 385 U.S. 39, 17 L. Ed. 2d 149, 87 S. Ct. 242 (1966)), nor for slander and libel (see, e.g., Time, Inc. v. Hill, 385 U.S. 374, 17 L. Ed. 2d 456, 87 S. Ct. 534 (1967)), nor for annoying, disruptive, and distracting speech which emanates from vehicles equipped with sound amplifying devices (see Kovacs v. Cooper, 336 U.S. 77, 93 L. Ed. 513, 69 S. Ct. 448, 10 A.L.R.2d 608 (1949)). Thus, the term “advocate” does not carry with it the unconditional protection of the First Amendment and where, as in the immediate oath, it is cast in terms of violent activity, it must be construed as that unprotected form of speech or conduct which incites imminent violence. As such, it is properly proscribed in the Washington loyalty oath for candidates for public office.
Similarly, the challenged term “revolution”, when read in the context of the quahfying terms in the oath which accompany it, necessarily relates to and involves force or violence and the destruction or overthrow of government by such means. Construing the term “revolution” in the Washington oath to mean or encompass both peaceful and violent change in government leaves neither purpose nor basis in logic for the remaining terms “force” and “violence”; both would be vitiated or subsumed by such a broad construction of the subject term. The general meaning of the term revolution certainly would include substantial and sweeping, dramatic or even radical change in the structure of government. But, if such change were peaceful, *546by peaceful means and without force and violence, this would not be proscribed by the oath as construed herein. Given the narrow and only logical construction of “revolution” as it appears in this oath, as embracing imminent force or violence, the legislature was justified in prescribing this oath for candidates for public office.
Although the legislature might well reexamine and reconsider the draftsmanship employed in RCW 29.18.030 in the light of opinions of the members of the court in this case, it seems to me that the challenged terms in the full context of the instant loyalty oath bear no constitutional infirmity in reasonably proscribing active or imminent incitement to violence respecting the overthrow, destruction, or alteration of government.
Before concluding I feel compelled to express some words of caution to any elective or other public officials. Namely, the oath here involved must be construed and applied strictly in accordance with the analysis, evaluation, and the views expressed by the majority of this court. Any deviation therefrom will be subject to constitutional invalidation in an appropriate proceeding in the courts of this state.
For the reasons indicated, I join the majority in affirming the initial order of this court.
Stafford, J., concurs with Finley, J.