Court Opinion

ID: 9426325
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:17:34.365109+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:00.230697
License: Public Domain

Mr. Chief Justice Burger,
concurring.
I concur in the Court’s opinion, and also in Part III of Mr. Justice Powell’s concurring opinion.
*841Permitting political campaigning on military bases cuts against a 200-year tradition of keeping the military separate from political affairs, a tradition that in my view is a constitutional corollary to the express provision for civilian control of the military in Art. II, § 2, of the Constitution.
As Mr. Justice Powell notes, however. Fort Dix Reg. 210-27 — at least to the extent that it permits distribution of some political leaflets on military bases — cannot be justified as implementing this policy of separation or even as consistent with our tradition of separation. I agree that the regulation, insofar as it permits a military commander to avert a clear threat to the loyalty, discipline, or morale of his command, is justified by the requirements of military life and the mission of the Armed Forces. But a commander could achieve this goal in another way as well, by banning the distribution on base of all political leaflets; the hard question for me is whether the Constitution requires a ban on all distributions in order to preserve the separation of the military from politics. Although there are dangers in permitting any distribution of political materials on a military base, those dangers are of less magnitude and narrower in scope than the dangers involved in requiring the military to permit political rallies and campaigning on a base; the risk that soldiers will become identified with a particular candidate is, for example, less when a leaflet is handed out than when meetings or political rallies are held. The differences are substantial enough that the decision whether to permit conventional political material to be distributed is one properly committed to the judgment of the military authorities — whether or not they have exercised that judgment wisely in promulgating the regulation before us.
I would add only a note of caution. History demonstrates, I think, that the real threat to the independence *842and neutrality of the military — and the need to maintain as nearly as possible a true “wall” of separation — comes not from the kind of literature that would fall within the prohibition of Reg. 210-27, but from the risk that a military commander might attempt to “deliver” his men’s votes for a major-party candidate. This record, as the Court notes, presents no issue of discriminatory or improper, enforcement, but that should not be taken as an indication that the issue is not one of serious dimensions. It is only a little more than a century ago that some officers of the Arméd Forces, then in combat, sought to exercise undue influence either for President Lincoln or for his opponent, General McClellan, in the election of 1864.