Court Opinion

ID: 9446018
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:43:59.017361+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:28.769915
License: Public Domain

EDGERTON, Chief Judge, whom BAZELON, Circuit Judge,
joins (dissenting) .
A unanimous panel of this court decided that “the opinion of the Supreme Court in Watkins v. United States * * requires reversal” of the conviction of Singer.1 Barenblatt, like Singer, was convicted of refusing to answer questions of a subcommittee of the Un-American Activities Committee investigating Communists in the field of education. There is no difference pertinent to Watkins between Singer’s case and Barenblatt’s. I think this court errs in overruling our Singer decision.
I understand Watkins to hold that the Committee on Un-American Activities *137had no authority to compel testimony because it had no definite assignment from Congress. The Supreme Court said: “[W]hen First Amendment rights are threatened, the delegation of power to the Committee must be clearly revealed in its charter. [354 U.S. at page 198, 77 S.Ct. at page 1184] * * * An essential premise in this situation is that the House or Senate shall have instructed the Committee members on what they are to do with the power delegated to them. * * * [T]he responsibility of the Congress * * * to insure that compulsory process is used only in furtherance of a legislative purpose * * * requires that the instructions to an investigating committee spell out that group’s jurisdiction and purpose with sufficient particularity. [354 U.S. at page 201, 77 S.Ct. at page 1186] * * It would be difficult to imagine a less explicit authorizing resolution. [354 U.S. at page 202, 77 S.Ct. at page 1187] *• Combining the language of the resolution with the construction it has been given, it is evident that the preliminary control of the Committee exercised by the House of Representatives is slight or non-existent. No one could reasonably deduce from the charter the kind of investigation that the Committee was directed to make. [354 U.S. at pages 203-204, 77 S.Ct. at page 1187] * * * The Committee is allowed, in essence, to define its own authority * * [This] can lead to ruthless exposure of private lives in order to gather data that is neither desired by the Congress nor useful to it. * * * Protected freedoms should not be placed in danger in the absence of a clear determination by the House or the Senate that a particular inquiry is justified by a specific legislative need. * * * An excessively broad charter, like that of the House Un-Amer-ican Activities Committee, places the courts in an untenable position * * * . [354 U.S. at page 205, 77 S.Ct. at page 1188] It is impossible in such a situation to ascertain whether any legislative purpose justifies the disclosures sought * * * The reason no court can make this critical judgment is that the House of Representatives itself has never made it. * * * Plainly these committees are restricted to the missions delegated to them, i. e., to acquire certain data to be used by the House or the Senate in coping with a problem that falls within its legislative sphere. No witness can be compelled to make disclosures on matters outside that area.” [354 U.S. at page 206, 77 S.Ct. at page 1189.]
In summary: (1) The “instructions to an investigating committee [must] spell out that group’s jurisdiction and purpose with sufficient particularity.” (2) “It would be difficult to imagine a less explicit authorizing resolution * * *. No one could reasonably deduce from the charter the kind of investigation that the Committee was directed to make.” (3) “No witness can be compelled to make disclosures on matters outside that area.” Since Congress did not define-that area, there can be no proof that the Committee’s questions were within it. It follows that the defendant must be acquitted.
Even if, contrary to my clear understanding of Watkins, Congress did “with sufficient particularity” authorize the Committee to investigate something, it by no means follows that Congress authorized the Committee to investigate Communists in the field of education. Four Justices of the Supreme Court recently said: “It is particularly important, that the exercise of the power of compulsory process be carefully circumscribed when the investigative process tends to impinge upon such highly sensitive areas as freedom of speech or press, freedom of political association, and freedom of communication of ideas, particularly in the academic community. * * * [T]he areas of academic freedom and political expression” are “areas in which government should be extremely reticent to tread.” Two other Justices said in the same case: “These pages need not be burdened with proof, based on the testimony of a cloud of impressive witnesses, of the dependence of a free society on free universities. This *138means the exclusion of governmental intervention in the intellectual life of a university.” Sweezy v. State of New Hampshire, 354 U.S. 234, 245, 250, 262, 77 S.Ct. 1203, 1209, 1211, 1217, 1 L.Ed.2d 1311. The Court there held that Sweezy, a university teacher, could not constitutionally be required to answer certain questions about his political activities and connections. Barenblatt was a university teacher. He was convicted because he would not answer certain questions about his political activities and connections. Though the two cases are not identical and Sweezy does not prove that Barenblatt’s conviction violates his constitutional rights, it does show that this conviction raises serious constitutional questions. Delegation of power to a congressional committee must be construed narrowly when a narrow construction avoids serious constitutional questions. United States v. Rumely, 345 U.S. 41, 73 S.Ct. 543, 97 L.Ed. 770. The words of the Committee’s charter, “investigations of * * * un-American propaganda activities”, need not and therefore should not be interpreted to authorize the Committee to select for investigation political activities and connections of university teachers. We must suppose that if Congress had intended to authorize such an investigation it would have done so explicitly.
We need not consider whether the Committee’s questions to Barenblatt were pertinent to an investigation of Communists in the .field of education. The force of the Court’s decision in Watkins that the Committee had no definite assignment, and therefore no authority to compel testimony, is not destroyed by the Court’s decision that the questions Watkins refused to answer were not clearly pertinent to the investigation in which the Committee was then engaged. “[W]here there are two grounds, upon either of which an appellate court may rest its decision, and it adopts both, ‘the ruling on neither is obiter, but each is the judgment of the court and of equal validity with the other.’ ” United States v. Title Insurance & Trust Co., 265 U.S. 472, 486, 44 S.Ct. 621, 623, 68 L.Ed. 1110. And even if the Supreme Court’s demonstration that the Committee on Un-American Activities had no authority to compel testimony were obiter, this court should defer to it.
Although, on examination, the answer to a question is plain, higher courts commonly require lower courts to make the examination and decide the question in the first instance. The Supreme Court followed the usual practice in this case.

. Singer v. United States, 101 U.S.App.D.C. 129, 247 F.2d 535, reversing Singer v. United States, 100 U.S.App.D.C. 260, 244 F.2d 349, which had affirmed United States v. Singer, D.C.D.C., 139 F.Supp. 847.