HUAC vs. THE CONSTITUTION

...It is clear that the Committee is ignoring the ruling in the Watkins case except to mouth at the beginning of each hearing a statement certifying to the "legislative purpose" of the proceedings...

...It includes surveys of defects in our social, economic, or political system for the purposes of enabling the Congress to remedy them...

...That is the way of life in this great legislative body...

...It makes no difference that these individuals might be unattractive to others, hold political opinions considered dangerous and subversive by others, or whether they be members of the Ku Klux Klan, the Black Muslims, the Minutemen, or the Communist Party...

...The legislative branch has no power to punish...

...There has been no change, however, in the Committee procedure of exposure and punishment, the pattern of calling unfriendly witnesses and asking them questions about activities sometimes as far back as thirty or even forty years ago, with no discernible legislative purpose...

...When the Seventy-ninth Congress convened on January 3, 1945, the mandate of the Dies Committee, predecessor to the House Committee on Un-American Activites, had expired...

...Our objections are fundamental...

...The Barenblatt case, in 1959, upheld the Committee's mandate by a five to four vote...

...it is a question of amending the rules of the House to provide for a permanent standing committee that does not consider legislation, but has one subject, one field, the field of investigating and making a report . . . There is a big difference between establishing a standing committee to investigate and establishing a special investigating committee for a particular Congress...

...I can furnish the House with many statements made by Committee members and staff to the effect that the Committee's function is to "expose for the sake of exposure...

...We should be embarrassed that the Supreme Court was forced in the Watkins case to restrict the House Committee on Un-American Activities by declaring as unconstitutional its avowed raison d'etre to expose for the sake of exposure...

...We should not await orders from the Court...

...Now, we know that Congress would not and could not pass the classic type of bill of attainder forbidden in Section 9, Article I. Our Founding Fathers were very sensitive to the perils of bills of attainder...

...Since the Watkins decision in 1957, requiring that all committee investigations have a legislative.purpose, the House Committee on Un-American Activities has spent $2,627,000, an average of more than $327,000 per year, and has produced two bills that became law, and one of those was to make a minor correction in an earlier law and was unopposed...

...the Constitution by DON EDWARDS This argument against continuation of the House Un-American Activities Committee is adapted from a major speech on the subject by Representative Don Edwards, California Democrat...

...Should we also contemplate an extension of the Federal criminal law to punish individuals who violate the civil rights of others, then it might be appropriate to subpoena witnesses who are members of the Ku Klux Klan, or a bill to proscribe private armies might require hearings at which Minutemen are called to testify...

...Years ago the House put a rider on an appropriation bill barring three Federal employes from collecting their salaries...

...Ithink it appropriate for me to try to analyze why we are faced with this problem today, why there are some of us members of the House who feel that we have no choice but to oppose this appropriation for the House Committee on Un-American Activities, and why we are supported by great numbers of patriotic Americans, by distinguished lawyers, professors, scholars, by world-respected newspapers, and eminent religious leaders...

...They are constitutional...

...But there is no Congressional power under the Constitution that would license the Judiciary or any other committee to subpoena Ku Klux Klan members for purposes of exposing them to the country as members of this primitive sect and to bring upon them the disgrace and calumny associated with membership...

...If this amendment is adopted, as far as I know it will be the first time in the history of this body that a committee of this kind was ever established as a permanent or standing committee...

...Only in totalitarian countries can this awesome power be found in the legislature...

...Witnesses are called and subjected to publicity and exposure, in effect convicted by a legislative committee of association or ideas which are not crimes but which the Committee feels are punishable regardless...

...In its more than twenty years of existence as a standing committee, the House Committee on Un-American Activities has reported only three bills which have become law...

...The Committee's actions are those of the entire House of Representatives, for it is a part of us and gains its power and authority from us...

...In United States v. Lovett, the Supreme Court held this action to be void as a bill of attainder, that its "effect was to inflict punishment without the safeguards of a judicial trial" and that this cannot be done either by a state or by the United States...

...It is expected that my Committee, the Judiciary, will be considering amendments to the Civil Rights Act of 1964...

...Court direction is not the dignified way to reform this great legislative body...

...The Supreme Court held in the Watkins case that committees of Congress lack the authority under the Constitution to investigate and hold hearings for the purpose of exposure and punishment...

...This clear example of an unlawful bill of attainder is duplicated over and over again by the Committee, the only difference being that the actual bill itself is not brought to the floor and passed...

...There must always be a legislative purpose...

...I am confident that the Supreme Court will ultimately find the resolution establishing the House Committee on Un-American Activities unconstitutional...

...They are not assuaged in the least by recent announcements that the Committee now contemplates inquiry into the activities of the Ku Klux Klan, the Minutemen, the Black Muslims, or any other group that may be described as a part of the radical right...

...It encompasses inquiries concerning the administration of existing laws as well as proposed or possibly needed statutes...

...I have no doubt that the United States Supreme Court will ultimately find the resolution establishing the House Committee on Un-American Activities in violation of the Constitution...

...The same constitutional disabilities exist regardless of the political philosophy of the Committee's targets...

...There is no general authority to expose the private affairs of individuals without justification in terms of the functions of the Congress...

...It seems clear that under the Watkins decision alone, the Committee is operating in violation of the United States Constitution...

...McCormack, Representative Francis Walter of Pennsylvania, later to become the Committee's chairman, and other distinguished members of the House...

...The men who wrote our Constitution were determined, as Justice Black pointed out in the Barenblatt v. the United States dissent, that the punishment of American citizens was "too serious a matter to be entrusted to any group other than an independent judiciary and a jury of twelve men acting on previously-passed, unambiguous laws, with all the procedural safeguards which included the right to counsel, compulsory process for witnesses, specific indictments, confrontation of accusers, as well as protection against self-incriminations, double jeopardy, and cruel and unusual punishment—in short, due process of law...

...It had been established as a temporary investigative committee and would have needed new authorization and appropriation in the Congress just convened...

...It comprehends probes into departments of the Federal government to expose corruption, inefficiency, or waste...

...The second area where I charge the Committee to be contrary to the Constitution is that it conducts legislative trials contrary to Section 9, Article I of the Constitution that proscribes the passage of bills of attainder...

...Since the Watkins case the Committee has avoided such statements...

...Our Constitution is explicit...

...After further debate, the Rankin amendment prevailed by a vote of 208 to 186, thus establishing the House Committee on Un-American Activities as a standing committee...

...The House of Representatives, through its authorized committee, the House Committee on Un-American Activities, punishes citizen after citizen for prior actions, opinions, and associations which are not crimes, but which the Committee considers so distasteful that the citizen nevertheless must be punished, and by the Committee, not the courts...

...The rub is that the House Committee on Un-American Activities never should have been created by this body as a standing committee...

...Let me review what happened here in this chamber...

...and secondly, its practice of holding legislative trials in violation of Section 9, Title I of the Constitution proscribing bills of attainder...

...We can and must put our own house in order...

...This action was at the urging of the Committee which said that the views and writings of these workers were subversive and therefore the three were unfit for employment...

...A standing committee once established is immensely difficult to get rid of, even though its mandate is probably unconstitutional and its behavior embarrassing and belittling to the Congress...

...I believe that if a similar case were to be decided today by the Supreme Court, that the Barenblatt decision would be overruled...

...Only the courts can punish and only then pursuant to due process...

...Representative Edwards has had considerable experience in investigations, having served as a special agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and as a wartime Naval Intelligence officer.—The Editors...

...Mark what we are doing...

...This is not a question of establishing an investigating committee to investigate conditions that arise from time to time...

...It is significant to note, however, that those voting in the negative included the Majority Leader, Mr...

...Except for the vote on the Committee's appropriation in May, 1946, when eighty-one members voted against the Committee, it has had no great difficulty in remaining a standing committee...

...Punishment of an American citizen by bringing him before a Congressional committee for the purpose of "exposure" is a legislative trial and is unconstitutional as a bill of attainder...

...But, at that moment, Representative John Rankin of Mississippi offered an amendment to make the House Committee on Un-American Activities a permanent standing committee...

...Its existence is patently unconstitutional in at least two respects—its practice of investigating with no legislative purpose but exclusively for purposes of exposure...

...And, one might also ask, where is the legislation that in due course results from these investigations and hearings which can be constitutional only if they have a legislative purpose...

...In Watkins v. the United States in 1957, the Court by a six to one decision defined the limits of the Congressional power to conduct investigations: "The power is broad...

...A spirited debate followed, and the Majority Leader, Representative John McCormack, now our distinguished Speaker, protested the Rankin amendment as follows: "I do not know when in the history of our country the national House of Representatives has ever provided by rule for a permanent investigative committee...

...But broad as is this power of inquiry, it is not unlimited...

...Representative Adolph Sabath of Illinois offered the usual resolution to the effect that the rules of the Seventy-ninth Congress be the same as those of the Seventy-eighth Congress...

...Loss of reputation and job quickly follow as news of the legislative trial is fed to the press...

...The Committee's public statements made before the Watkins case were quite candid in stating that its function was to "expose to the merciless glare of publicity" individuals it thought were or had been Communists or Communist sympathizers or dupes...