Court Opinion

ID: 9421516
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:58:40.325404+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:30.433711
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Harlan,
whom Mr. Justice Burton, Mr. Justice Clark and Mr. Justice Whittaker join,
dissenting.
I regret my inability to join the Court’s opinion, for its effort to find a way out from the rigors of a severe statute has alluring appeal. The difficulty is that in order to reach its result the Court has had to take impermissible liberties with the statute and the record upon which this case is based.
Section 22 of the Internal Security Act of 1950, under which these proceedings were brought, provides for the deportation of aliens who at the time of entry into the United States, or thereafter, were “members of or affiliated with . . . the Communist Party of the United States . ...” 1 In this case there is no dispute that the petitioner was a dues-paying member of the Communist Party for about a year after he entered the United States. The Court, however, finds the record insufficient to establish that petitioner’s membership was “the kind of meaningful association required by the alleviating Amendment of 1951,” and suggests that “the dominating impulse to his ‘affiliation’ with the Communist Party may well have been wholly devoid of any ‘political’ implications.” *122This holding is derived from the Act of March 28, 1951, which amended the Internal Security Act by exempting from the broad sweep of the membership provision those persons who joined the Party “(a) when under sixteen years of age, (b) by operation of law, or (c) for purposes of obtaining employment, food rations, or other essentials of living, and where necessary for such purposes.” 2 The Court does not rely here upon any of these exemptions as such, but rests its decision on its finding in Galvan v. Press, 347 U. S. 522, 527, that the legislative discussion of these exemptions indicates that the membership provision of the 1950 Act should be read benignly.
The Court’s holding as to the insufficiency of this record may be interpreted in one of two ways, either (a) that petitioner was not shown to have joined the Communist Party conscious of its character as a political organization, or (b) that if he did so join, his membership was nonetheless excusable under the 1950 Act because it was predominantly motivated by economic necessity.
Under either view of the Court’s opinion I think that the setting aside of this deportation order cannot be reconciled with the holding in Galvan v. Press, supra. There the Court, in rejecting the contention that the statute should be interpreted as not reaching persons who joined or remained members of the Communist Party without knowledge of its tenets of force and violence,3 said, p. 528: “It is enough that the alien joined the Party, aware that he was joining an organization known as the Communist Party which operates as a distinct and active political organization, and that he did so of his own free will.” I need not retrace the reasoning which *123inescapably led the Court to that decision,4 save to note one point not alluded to in the Galvan opinion, namely, that the ameliorating amendment of the 1951 Act, on whose “spirit” the Court here relies, was motivated solely by the problems of aliens who were being excluded from entry into the United States because they had joined totalitarian organizations in foreign countries.5
*124Under the first possible view of the Court’s opinion it is plain that the petitioner is deportable, for in my judgment the record leaves no room for the conclusion that he was *125unaware that the Communist Party was “a distinct and active political organization.” The petitioner has freely admitted that he was a member of the Party for about a year; that he paid Party dues; that he attended Party meetings; and that he worked, without pay, in the Party bookstore, which he recognized as “an official outlet for communist literature.” Beyond this, petitioner’s testimony betrayed considerable, albeit rudimentary, knowledge of Communist history and philosophy. To be sure, he disclaimed belief in the forcible overthrow of government, but that, as Galvan holds, is immaterial under this statute.
Perhaps it should be added that I do not understand the Court to suggest that, although petitioner joined the Communist Party aware that it was a political organization, his activities in the Party were too slight to constitute him a “member” within the meaning of the 1950 Act. The Court’s reaffirmation of the Galvan definition of membership would seem to preclude such an interpretation of the opinion. Moreover, that interpretation would do violence to the sweeping and unequivocal language of the Act itself.
The Court says that the “differences on the facts between Galvan v. Press . . . and this case are too obvious to be detailed.” But, in respect to the crucial question whether conscious membership in the Communist Party as a political organization was sufficiently shown, I submit that this record is at least as strong as that in Galvan. A “detailing” of the record before us will demonstrate this, and I have therefore liberally quoted from it in the Appendix to this opinion, post, p. 127.
The second possible ground of the Court’s decision is equally foreclosed by Galvan. For if the record shows, as I believe it plainly does, that the petitioner joined the Communist Party of the United States of his own free will, and knowing it to be “a distinct and active political *126organization,” the 1950 Act makes his economic motives for joining just as irrelevant as the absence of proof that he did not believe in the violent overthrow of government.
The Court’s action in this case calls to mind what Mr. Justice Cardozo said in Anderson v. Wilson, 289 U. S. 20, 27: “We do not pause to consider whether a statute differently conceived and framed would yield results more consonant with fairness and reason. We take the statute as we find it.” Again, with specific reference to the statute here involved, this Court said in Galvan, p. 528: “A fair reading of the legislation requires that this scope [see ante, p. 122] be given to what Congress enacted in 1950, however severe the consequences and whatever view one may have of the wisdom of the means which Congress employed to meet its desired end.” I fear that the Court has departed from those wise precepts in this instance.
My view of this case would require us to deal with petitioner’s contention that the statute, as applied to him, is unconstitutional. Since the Court does not reach that question, no extended discussion of it seems appropriate in a dissenting opinion. It is enough to say that I regard petitioner’s constitutional argument foreclosed by Galvan v. Press, supra, Harisiades v. Shaugh-nessy, 342 U. S. 580, and by the considerations and long line of authorities to which those cases refer. Whatever may be the scope of the limitations of the Fifth Amendment upon the deportation power (see Galvan, at pp. 530-531) — a question as to which I reserve the right to speak when occasion arises — I think that there is no constitutional bar to the statute as applied in this case.
For the foregoing reasons I would affirm the judgment below.
*127APPENDIX TO OPINION OF MR. JUSTICE HARLAN, DISSENTING.
Excerpts From the Record.
After being warned of his rights, petitioner went on to say:
“I told you just now. I don’t want to give testimony whatsoever on that Communist stuff again. That is finished for me as far as I am concerned. I am telling you that I have been working here 32 years — since 1914, and you can ask me what kind of work you are doing, how much wages you are getting, does your boss like you, but I don’t want to be asked anything else about politics because I am not interested. I am too old to be interested. I am not interested whether the Republicans get in office, or the Democrats, or the Communists, or the Socialists. I do not want anything else to be asked because I don’t want to be in this country. I am. just in this country for the people’s benefit. I am working and paying taxes all the time for them. Why should I go through this and get trapped through your questioning? I do not want to be asked anything about politics. It is 10 years ago now. I don’t care what they have in their minds. I don’t want to answer any trapping questions. If they don’t want me in this country, they can take me and ship me any time.”
Thereafter the following occurred, omitting certain portions of the record of no significance here and the testimony already quoted by the Court that related to petitioner’s disclaimer of belief in the forcible overthrow of government:
“Q. Are you a member of any organizations or societies of any kind at the present time?
*128“A. Yes, I belong to the A. F. L. Local No. 665, Miscellaneous Hotel & Restaurant Workers.
“Q. To what organizations have you belonged in the past?
“A. In the past, the Workers’ Alliance, the Communist Party.
“Q. When did you join the Workers’ Alliance?
“A. In the spring or summer of 1935,1 joined both the Workers’ Alliance and the Communist Party.
“Q. Where did you join these organizations?
“A. In Minneapolis.
“Q. Did you hold any office in either of these organizations?
“A. Not in the Communist Party but in the Workers’ Alliance, I was on the Executive Board, and once in a while I was secretary for some local.
“Q. What — the purpose of your joining the Communist Party at that time?
“A. We had no books then, just paid dues, and somebody collected.
“Q. Did you carry a party dues book at that time?
“A. No, but in the Workers’ Alliance we had dues books.
“Q. Did you carry a Communist Party card at that time?
“A. I don’t think we had cards at all.
“Q. For how long were you a member of the Communist Party?
“A. From then on until I got arrested and that was at the end of 1935. When I was arrested, I finished the Communist Party membership, but I stayed in the Workers’ Alliance.
“Q. What were your political beliefs at the time you joined the Communist Party?
*129“A. My political beliefs were always somewhat for the benefit of most of the people — always for the benefit to help most of the people.
“Q. Apparently you were a member of the Communist Party for approximately one year. Is that correct?
“A. Yes, probably something like that.
“Q. What is your opinion of a revolution, such as occurred in Russia when the Communists obtained power?
“A. What is my opinion of the Russian revolution — that is about it. As much as I know about it, the Russian revolution, in my opinion, is this. It seemed that at the end of the war of 1914, the Russian middle-class especially and the Russian soldiers were sick and tired of being double-crossed and betrayed by their generals and what not (they went in with the Germans). Russian soldiers spilled their blood running against the Germans without ammunition, and there was chaos in the country. I said middle-class — that they organized and succeeded in overthrowing that particular leadership which was headed by the Czar. But this is my opinion. This was under the leadership of Kerensky. Seemingly, Lenin and his followers which represented more the lower peasant and factory workers, were not satisfied with this set-up, and kept on working for another revolution which finally overthrew the whole upper class in the fall of 1918, and so divorced themselves for the first time in world’s history, economically and politically, from the rest of the world. That is the way I see it. That is my opinion on that.
“Q. Do you feel that your beliefs in government have changed during the past ten years, that is, since *130you terminated membership in the Communist Party?
“A. Yes, it has changed to that extent — that I began thinking for myself instead of following somebody else telling me things. I found that nothing can be broken over a knee, and that any government that exists today has a right to exist as it is — by the power of the majority of a nation’s people. Nobody in the world can say there are no changes. We must always consider changes. They can be made when the people see that it is the right time for it, and at that time they will have their representatives which will take care of it. I am absolutely against sudden dictatorship and overthrow of government.
“Q. What is your opinion as to whether communism was the cause or outgrowth of the Russian revolution?
“A. Communism did not start the revolution. The middle-class started the revolution. Lenin got hold of it. Communism was the result of the revolution.
“Q. Were you an organizer for the Communist Party?
“A. No.
“Q. What is your personal belief as to the principles of communism?
“A. What is communism? That is a good question. My belief is a different thing than communism is. According to Marx and Lenin and as I have seen the Communists working, since I knew of them, they are aiming, more or less, with forever methods to set up an economic system to get the people out of a monopoly control on to their own economic feet. That is the way I see them working now.”

 64 Stat. 987, 1006, 1008.

 65 Stat. 28.

 “It must be concluded, therefore, that support, or even demonstrated knowledge, of the Communist Party’s advocacy of violence was not intended to be a prerequisite to deportation.” 347 U. S., at 528.

 The result reached in Galvan was thoroughly consistent both with the judicial and administrative decisions interpreting the predecessors of the 1950 Act, and with the purpose of that Act to “strengthen” the provisions of the law relating “to the exclusion and deportation ... of subversive aliens.” See H. R. Rep. No. 3112, 81st Cong., 2d Sess., p. 54. Compare the exhaustive treatment in Latva v. Nicolls, 106 F. Supp. 658, where Judge Wyzanski reached the same conclusion as to the meaning of the 1950 Act.

 This conclusion is compelled by the legislative history. The House of Representatives Report on the bill embodying the amendment stated:
“The attention of the Committees on the Judiciary of both Houses has been directed to the increasing number of cases in which non-immigrant and immigrant visas have been withheld or admission into this country denied to aliens on the basis of regulations issued pursuant to the act of October 16, 1918, as amended. The majority of the cases brought to the attention of the committees involve spouses of servicemen, close relatives of American citizens, permanent residents previously admitted into the United States and returning from abroad to their unrelinquished domiciles with appropriate documentation, such as reentry permits, etc.
“The reason most frequently given for the denial of visas or the denial of admission appears to be the applicant’s past membership of [sic], or affiliation with, certain totalitarian youth, national labor, or professional student, or similar organizations, or the alien’s service in the German or Italian Armies, or his involuntary membership in totalitarian parties or their affiliates and auxiliaries, including those cases where it was shown that such membership or affiliation occurred by operation of law or edict, or for purposes of obtaining or preserving employment, food rations, or other essentials of living.
“The bill makes clear the intent of Congress that aliens who are, or were, voluntary members of . . . totalitarian parties or organizations are to be excluded, but aliens who were involuntary mem*124bers . . . are not to, be considered ipso facto as members of, or affiliated with, the . . . organizations within the meaning of the act of October 16, 1918, as amended.” H. R. Rep. No. 118, 82d Cong., 1st Sess., pp. 1-2. (Italics added.)
The debates on the floor of both Houses of Congress provide additional evidence on this score. In the Senate, where the major discussion took place, every specific reference to the scope of the proposed amendment discloses that its purpose was to assist individuals who were being denied admission into the United States because of their prior membership in totalitarian organizations in their homeland. For example, Senator Smith inquired at one point: “Would the pending bill exclude, for instance, a Ukrainian who lived in the Soviet Union and who was forced to belong to a Kulak farm cooperative in order to obtain work? Would such a man be excluded?” 97 Cong. Rec. 2369. And Senator McCarran, the chief author of the amendment, described its three subsections in revealing detail. With respect to each he emphasized that many “spouses of members of the United States Armed Forces” were included. The first class, he said, consisted of persons “who during infancy where [sic] members of the Hitler Youth, Fascist Youth, and similar organizations where the child’s education and welfare were made dependent upon membership . . . .” The second class embraced “aliens who unwittingly, and without their knowledge or consent, were impressed into the various labor fronts and professional unions and organizations; aliens who served in the German and Italian Armies; and aliens who ... by law or decree became members of or affiliated with subsidiary totalitarian organizations.” And the third class, as described by Senator McCarran, consisted of “aliens who were forced to become members of totalitarian organizations in order to obtain food ration cards, housing, employment, and other essentials of living.” 97 Cong. Rec. 2370-2371.
The inference that Congress intended to aid only persons being denied admission to the United States rather than persons subject to deportation for membership which took place in this country is substantially reinforced by the fact that when the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 repealed the ameliorating amendment, 66 Stat. 163, 280, its substance was re-enacted as far as exclusions were concerned, 66 Stat. 186, but not with respect to deportation.