Court Opinion

ID: 9423205
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:06:26.932624+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:42.836374
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Harlan,
whom Mr. Justice Stewart and Mr. Justice White join, dissenting.
The Court appears to hold that there is on the record so limited a legislative interest and so little relation between it and the information sought from appellant that the Constitution shields him from having to answer the questions put to him.* New Hampshire in my view should be free to investigate the existence or nonexistence of Communist Party subversion, or any other legitimate subject of concern to the State, without first being asked to produce evidence of the very type to be sought in the course of the inquiry. Then, given that the subject of investigation in this case is a permissible one, the appellant seems to me a witness who could properly be called to testify about it; I cannot say as a constitutional matter that inquiry into the current operations of the local Communist Party could not be advanced by knowledge of its operations a decade ago. Believing that “[o]ur function ... is purely one of constitutional adjudication” and “not to pass judgment upon the general wisdom or efficacy” of the investigating activities under scrutiny, Barenblatt v. United States, 360 U. S. 109, 125, I would affirm the judgment of the Supreme Court of New Hampshire.

No plea of a privilege against self-incrimination was interposed by the witness.