Court Opinion

ID: 9638160
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 15:36:23.120249+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:04.437300
License: Public Domain

WOOLLEY, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I am constrained to dissent from the judgment of the court, first on its statement of the ease, and next on the applicable law. I distinguish between the ease as stated and the case made by the record, as I read it. The eourt has stated the ease as though the Senate of the United States had in fact adjudged Cunningham, the relator, guilty of contempt for refusing to answer questions which its committee had theretofore propounded to him, and, standing on that predicate, it has entered into a discussion of the relevancy and validity of the questions asked and the relator’s justification for refusing to answer them. As I read the record, there was no such adjudication for contempt. There was nothing more than a recommends tion by a committee that the Senate adjudge him in contempt. On that recommendation the Senate did not act. In truth, the Senate has neither tried nor eonvieted Cunningham for contempt.. Nor has it indicated a purpose to try him. All it did was to authorize the issuance of a warrant of arrest, which, as I read the record, is the real beginning of the controversy here on an appeal from an order of a district judge dismissing the petition for a writ of habeas corpus. The warrant of arrest is not a contempt process, original or execution. It is an exercise by the Senate of the United States of its power to call a person before it and interrogate him in regard to matters of legislation, or of determining “the election, returns and qualifications” of one claiming the right to sit as a member of that body.
The power of the Senate to “judge of the elections, returns, and qualifications of its own members” is expressly conferred by the Constitution (article 1, section 5), and the Supreme Court has said that “the two houses of Congress, in their separate relations, possess not only such powers as are expressly granted to them by the Constitution, but such auxiliary powers as are necessary and appropriate to make the express powers effective. * * * The power of inquiry — with process to enforce it — is an essential and appropriate auxiliary to the legislative function.” McGrain v. Daugherty, 273 U. S. 135, 47 S. Ct. 319, 71 L. Ed, 580, 50 A. L. R. 1. Yery recently, in Reed v. County Commissioners of Delaware County, Pennsylvania, 277 U. S. 376, 48 S. Ct. 531, 72 L. Ed. 924, the Supreme Court, speaking of the same subject, said that the Senate “is fully empowered, and may determine such matters without the aid of the House of Representatives or the Executive- or Judicial Department. That power carries with it authority to take such steps as-may be appropriate and necessary to secure-information upon which to decide concerning, elections. * * * By means of its own process or that of its committee, the Senate is. empowered to obtain evidence relating to the matters committed to it by the Constitution.” That, I think, is precisely what the Senate, conformably with precedent, did. in this instance, being particular to embody in the resolution which authorized the warrant of arrest its purpose, which was not to. punish the relator for past contumacy or tctry him for contempt, but “to bring (him) before the bar of the Senate * * * to. answer such questions pertinent to the matter under inquiry as the Senate, through its. said committee, or the President of the Senate, may propound.” Clearly the warrant of.' arrest in this case is a “process to enforce”" the Senate’s “power of inquiry.” What, questions the Senate may lawfully ask, when-in response to the warrant the relator is produced before that body, surely this eourtr should not anticipate or prejudge. Nor should it determine their propriety or validity from the possible impropriety, irrelevancy, or invalidity of questions previously-asked.
Moreover, I am not persuaded to the contention advanced by the relator and adopted by the eourt that the warrant of arrest is in itself invalid. The power of the Senate to-, judge the elections, returns, and qualifications of its members is essentially judicial,., and to make that power effective it also has power, like all other judicial tribunals, to compel attendance of witnesses by compulsory process. That compulsory process of a-bench warrant or a warrant of arrest is dependent for its validity upon disobedience of a previously' issued subpoena is not found in any federal or state statute (U. S. Code, title 28, § 659 [28 USCA § 659]; Massachusetts., *823'General Laws 1921, e. 277, § 70; New York Code of Criminal Procedure, § 618b), or in any judicial decision that has come to my attention. The fact that resort to such process usually follows disobedience of a subpoena is merely an indication of its customary use, not of its invalidity when in a given exigency it is used otherwise.
Turning to .the general law, on which I base my dissent, I am constrained gravely to state and emphasize my conviction that the action (as distinguished from legislation) of the Senate of the Congress of the United States, a constituent body of an independent department of the government, is not subject to review and annulment by the judicial department. For a more particular statement of my views on the law, I refer and subscribe to the terse, yet entirely adequate, ■opinion which Judge Dickinson rendered when he dismissed the petition for a writ of habeas corpus.