THE UNION UNDER FIRE

...If proposals of this magnitude had been made in the early days of the republic, the voices of the lawyers of that time would have been heard from one end of our land to the other...

...This proposal has been aptly characterized as the "counter-revolution" of the state bodies against the Baker vs...

...Supreme Court on issues between Federal and state authority, could strip the national government of many of its major powers, and could remove Negroes, other minorities, and dissenters of any kind from the protection of the present Constitution and Federal laws...

...We are not nearly so sanguine as he appears to be that the assault on the Constitution "will come to nothing," in view of the spectacular success achieved so far...

...But nearly all the other voices of the mass media have been silent on the subject, either because they favor the amendments and realize silence works on their side, or because their knowledge of the threat they pose is shockingly scant...

...These delegations approved two of the amendments by large margins, but the "Court of the Union" proposal squeaked through by only one vote...

...Referring specifically to the amendment which would invest state legislatures with power to amend the Constitution, the ACLU said such a step would make it "possible for such basic rights as freedom of speech and religion, the privilege against self-incrimination, the right to jury trial or other freedoms in our Bill of Rights to be removed from the Constitution by a minority point of view...

...enabled us to escape 'the evils of despotism and totalitarianism.' " Another Constitutional expert who is opposed to all three amendments, Professor Willard Hurst of the University of Wisconsin Law School, said of the proposal to change the amending method: "Under the proposed procedure, an aggressive interest group sustained by money or narrow or selfish zeal could press through one state legislature at a time a measure subversive of national interest without ever being forced to submit the merits of the proposal to a tribunal (like the Congress or a national convention) constituted to give full representation to national concerns...

...The disunited states of 1787 that were the despair of the founding fathers even in that far less complicated era do not constitute a form of government which can survive against totalitarian forces in the Twentieth Century, nor meet even the simplest domestic needs of our country...

...What the eleven states of the Confederacy could not accomplish then by force of arms is being attempted now by lawful means, through a campaign to secure the adoption of three amendments designed to subvert the basic principles of the Constitution...

...The third amendment, establishing a "Court of the Union" composed of the chief justices of the fifty states, is another proposal designed to establish minority control that could lead to suppression of liberty and equality and the destruction of liberal legislation...

...they could also create governmental confusion and chaos on a scale,that ought to alarm responsible conservatives as well...

...The remarkable succcess achieved by the racist-reactionary-ruralist coalitions so quietly and in so short a time makes it imperative that the press and public officials turn the spotlight of exposure on the forces of nullification before they smuggle their proposed amendments through another state capitol...

...The first of these proposed amendments, to exclude the Federal courts from ruling on legislative districting, is intended to return to the state legislatures absolute power over the apportionment of seats...

...We believe the President was much too complacent, that he miight well have made a far more forceful statement of opposition...

...These amendments are backed by a powerful countrywide alliance of states rightists, ruralists, racists, and Right-wing extremists...

...On May 8, responding to a press conference question about the progress made by sponsors of the proposed amendments, President Kennedy did say that it seemed remarkable to him that organizations "founded in order to defend the Constitution should seek to change it, and particularly in such a basic way...

...Twenty-six state chief justices representing states with the smallest population, lowest level of education, and the greatest degree of bigotry, could thus constitute the super-court majority empowered to overturn the U. S. Supreme Court...

...The second proposal would permit the legislatures to amend the Constitution without consideration by Congress, or by any national convention, or even by state conventions...

...Carr decision last year of the U. S. Supreme Court, which ruled that serious inequalities in state election districts constitute a denial of the citizen's right to equal protection of the laws under the Constitution, and therefore are subject to Federal court action...

...Additional support is expected from Southern states which have not yet acted, and from some of the more sparsely settled states elsewhere in the country...

...More recently, the American Civil Liberties Union, long our most alert watchdog over constitutional guarantees of freedom, has taken the field against the three proposed amendments...

...During the first four months of this year, prior to the statements by Chief Justice Warren and the President, there was only a scattering of protests from a few newspapers and liberal voices, several law professors, the governors of Wisconsin and Nebraska, and, belatedly, a U. S. Justice Department aide...

...The delegates decided that the three amendments should be presented to all of the forty-eight state legislatures meeting this year...

...The legislative leaders have moved ahead rapidly...

...Three—Create a "Court of the Union," composed of the chief justices of the fifty states, with power to overrule the U. S. Spreme Court in all cases involving Federal-state relationships...

...Professor Black, an authority on the Constitution, has pointed out that the amendments "aim not at the preservation but at the subversion of that balance in Federal-state relations which has...

...It would be difficult to conceive of a plan more perfectly designed to invite powerful selfish and reactionary interests, which already exert excessive influence on many state lawmaking bodies, to control the course of the nation and destroy our Constitutional liberties...

...In a frightening burst of speed and with a singular lack of publicity, the first two amendments have been approved since January by one-third of the states needed to compel Congress to call a national convention on these proposals...

...Once incorporated into the Constitution, these amendments could not only doom the hopes of liberals supporting progressive legislation and pave the way for reversal of the modest forward steps this country has taken...

...In a public statement May 12 the ACLU warned that the package of amendments would, if adopted, have a "far-reaching and crippling" effect on civil liberties...

...This decision has only just begun to bring about a hopeful revamping of legislative districts so that a vote in the city or suburbs would equal at least some reasonable fraction of a vote in the country...

...The proposed amendment would reverse this move toward greater democracy and would tighten the rural-ist grip on the South and elsewhere by knocking the Federal courts out of the picture...

...If this amendment becomes part of the Constitution, all legislatures, including those controlled by rural members elected by a fifth, a tenth, or a fiftieth as many voters as are needed to elect a city or suburban member, will forever be the sole arbiters of apportionment of seats...

...Several newspapers have exposed the hidden impact of the proposed amendments...

...The great debate would be resounding in every legislative hall and in every place where scholars and statesmen gather...

...He added, however, that he thought the amendment "efforts will come to nothing and I will be glad when they do not...

...PROGRESSIVE "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free" The Union One hundred years ago the South sought to establish the supremacy of the separate states over the Federal union and failed...

...This counter-revolutionary amendment has now been approved by the legislatures of Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah, Washington, Wyoming, Nevada, and South Carolina...

...Far from being a feeble coalition led by fumbling crackpots, the alliance has demonstrated that it is a smooth, efficient machine whose quiet, almost unnoticed success up to now constitutes what may be the most serious threat to our system of national government since the bloodshed ended in 1865...

...This hardly constitutes an adequate force to contest the power of the legislative presiding officers and party whips, and the Council of State Governments, that have driven the amendments through lawmaking bodies in state after state in skillfully contrived silence...

...Should these fatally destructive amendments become part of our Constitution, state governments would achieve a dominance unmatched since the days of the futile Articles of Confederation, the Union would be fragmented, and the Federal government rendered impotent in significant areas of our national life...

...This proposal for minority rule has been passed by Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Wyoming, Florida, Illinois, New Hampshire, Texas, and Missouri...

...It provides that if two-thirds of the legislatures adopt an amendment to the Constitution, it automatically would be submitted to all the state legislatures...

...Surely the problems of America are as great today as they were in those days...

...It would thus be possible for legislative majorities of the thirty-eight least populous states, who are collectively chosen by only fifteen per cent of the nation's people, to riddle the present Constitution...

...The legal profession has also been shamefully silent, so much so that in an address delivered at Duke University April 27, the Chief Justice of the United States expressed shocked amazement that after researching all the publications of the legal societies and all the law reviews he found only one article—by Professor Charles L. Black of the Yale Law School, published in the Yale Law Journal—which dealt with the three amendments...

...Specifically, the three proposed Constitutional amendments would: One—Deny the Federal courts any jurisdiction over the apportionment of state legislative seats...

...Camouflaged as proposals to restore some of the powers which the states allegedly have lost to the Federal union, the whole package of dynamite-laden amendments was presented last December in Chicago to an assembly of state delegations held by the Council of State Governments...

...By the end of this legislative year, the proposals to exclude Federal courts' jurisdiction over apportionment of state legislatures and to permit state legislative bodies to amend the Federal Constitution may have won the approval of twenty to twenty-four states...

...No organized resistance to the nation-wide amendment drive has yet developed...

...The United States might well be crippled as a major power and a force for freedom in the world...

...It seems incredible that while a powerful coalition of state legislative leaders was trying to reduce the nation to a weak collection of squabbling states similar to that which existed under the Articles of Confederation almost 200 years ago, it became necessary for the Chief Justice of the United States to sound the principal note of alarm...

...If ratified by thirty-eight of them it would be added to the Constitution...

...The proposed amendments, if enacted, could cripple the system of Federal powers which Alexander Hamilton advocated, George Washington helped to establish, and Abraham Lincoln fought to preserve...

...Surely the Constitution should be as precious to us now as it was then...

...Since Warren is already a hated target of the Rightist-racist alliance, and must have realized that this warning could be readily distorted to appear self-serving, we can surmise with what regret and distaste he assumed a role that should have been taken, long before he spoke, by the lawyers of the land, members of Congress, the mass media, the voices of liberalism and labor, and by the President himself...

...If lawyers are not to be the watchmen for the Constitution, on whom are we to rely...

...This astounding proposal has already been approved by Arkansas, Wyoming, Florida, and Alabama...

...It is equally imperative that citizens in every state where the proposed amendments are pending before their legislatures arm themselves with the facts and fight back before it is too late...

...This super-court, empowered to overrule the U.S...

...Not another recognition of these drastic changes in our government," said Chief Justice Warren, "was to be found in any of these legal publications which are designed to alert, not only the members of the bar, but the public at large, to the legal problems confronting us...

...Two—Allow the state legislatures Under Fire to amend the Constitution without the approval of Congress or a state or national consensus of any kind...