Force Meeting Force

The Supreme Court of the U.S. has yet to pass on Federal Judge Harold Medina's formula for handling the Communist Party. Seven months ago, in the trial of the party's top leaders, Judge Medina ruled: if it can be shown that a group of Reds is actually plotting to destroy the U.S. "at the earliest time that circumstances would permit," then the state has the right to deal with them, even to the extent of limiting free speech. Last week, in their opinions on another case, five Supreme Court justices sounded as if they might be going even one step further.

Writing the majority opinion upholding the Taft-Hartley clause which requires labor leaders to sign non-Communist oaths, Chief Justice Vinson declared in effect that mere Communist membership can be construed as a threat to the U.S. and thus dealt with. "Force may and must be met with force. [The oath] is designed to protect the public not against what Communists and others identified therein advocate or believe, but against what Congress has concluded they have done and are likely to do again."

As to what they are likely to do, Associate Justice Jackson expounded: "The Communist Party is a conspiratorial and revolutionary junta, organized to reach ends and to use methods which are incompatible with our constitutional system . . . The Communist program purposes forcibly to recast our whole social and political structure after the Muscovite model of police-state dictatorship . . . The Communist Party alone among American parties past or present is dominated by a foreign government. . ."

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