Court Opinion

ID: 9664042
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 00:00:38.213379+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:01.432344
License: Public Domain

*646PICARD, District Judge
(concurring).
I subscribe to Chief Judge Simons’ very able opinion and although it completely answers all issues raised — particularly whether Congress has pre-empted the field of foreign relations — I desire to add but a word.
Briefly this is the situation as I view it:
. First: The plaintiff herein admits and proclaims he is a Communist and a member of the Communist Party of Michigan;
Second: The Communist Party of Michigan is affiliated with the Communist Party of the United States; and
Third: As proved and held in Dennis v. United States, 341 U.S. 494, 71 S.Ct. 857, 95 L.Ed. 1137, and determined by our own Michigan legislature, together with the great mass of evidence recently compiled, including declarations of those who have escaped Communist ideologies and resultant practices, the Communist Party of the United States has been adjudged, not a political association as such, but a world organization aimed to overthrow the government of the United States by force and violence. To admit being a member is incriminating. Blau v. United States, 340 U.S. 159, 71 S.Ct. 223, 95 L.Ed. 170; Alexander v. United States, 9 Cir., 181 F.2d 480. And our legislature had ample evidence to support its finding while plaintiff’s semi-disavowance of the type of Communist he is does not ring true and has no substance.
With that major premise either proven or admitted we proceed to the next point, viz., that it is both the duty and right of the State of Michigan to protect itself, in any legal manner against those attacking its sovereignty and its very existence. See Michigan Constitution, Section 22, Art. II and Dennis v. United States, supra. Michigan’s past efforts have evidently been without fruition, at least they apparently have not been effective against Communism in our State.
Petitioner’s counsel admitted at the hearing and in their briefs that the Communism which is the objective of the so-called Trucks Act is a menace from which the State of Michigan has the right to protect itself, but assert that the Michigan legislature has attempted to do so in a manner not consistent with our federal constitution. In other words, the means adopted are not the proper ones.
Our experience indicates that such would be the Communists’ contention no matter what law was enacted. What the Communists in truth are saying is that the State of Michigan is powerless to do what it has the right and duty to do.
Our answer to this is that there is no law that requires any state to pass legislation that meets the approval of the wrongdoers it would seek to restrain. While every safeguard should be thrown around our liberties enumerated in the first, fifth and fourteenth amendments, the constitutional objectives of our forefathers should likewise be kept in mind and we should not interpret that constitution by high sounding words and phrases which have the effect of shackling every act that tends to achieve those objectives while permitting the rogue and destructionist to continue his nefarious acts.
As Chief Justice Vinson said in the Dennis case [341 U.S. 494, 71 S.Ct. 867], supra:
“To those who would paralyze our Government in the face of impending threat by encasing it in a semantic straitj acket we must reply that all concepts are relative.”
In the case at bar plaintiff seeks the shield of our constitution long enough so that he may prepare and equip himself to destroy the very constitution and government that gives him that protection. If we stand by, being informed and forewarned by the Communists of their intentions, and do not seek to save ourselves from destruction, then we have encouraged and invited what we will eventually receive.
We are engaged in no sham battle. It is a matter of survival. The Trucks Act may not be ideally balanced or constructed but, under our Michigan Severability Clause, C.L.1948, Sec. 8.5, such questioned provisions of this act will be examined by our ■courts when they do become issues. As Judge Simons so well distinguishes, the question before this court is a comparative*647ly narrow one and where the act is attacked by plaintiff it is not unconstitutional.
I concur in his opinion and the writ of injuncton should be denied.