Truer Course

Except for its decisions on school desegregation, the U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren has come under no heavier fire than for its rulings in the prickly area of internal security. Time and again, in apparently sweeping opinions, the court threw its weight on the side of individuals involved in security cases--to the point where many a sober-minded observer feared that the public interest was being jeopardized. But last week, in a pair of 5-4 decisions, the Supreme Court gave clearer focus to two of the most controversial of its earlier security-case rulings, brought the conflict between individual rights and public interest into better balance. The then-and-now of the court's security decisions:

From Nelson to Uphaus. In 1956, a 6-to-3 decision of the Supreme Court reversed the Pennsylvania conviction of Communist Leader Steve Nelson on state sedition charges. Said the majority opinion written by Chief Justice Warren: Federal regulations against subversive activity were so "pervasive" that "Congress left no room for the states to supplement [them]." By its language, the opinion seemed to be kicking the states completely out of the antisedition field.

But one of last week's decisions sharply narrowed the scope of Nelson. The case was brought before the Supreme Court by one Willard C.Uphaus, head of a pacifist, left-wing organization called World Fellowship, Inc., who had refused to produce a list of guests at a fellowship summer camp when asked for it by New Hampshire's Attorney General during an investigation authorized by the state legislature. Ordered by state courts to hand over the list or go to jail, Uphaus appealed, relying heavily on Nelson.

Last week, in an opinion written by Justice Tom Clark (Justices Felix Frankfurter, John Marshall Harlan, Charles Evans Whittaker and Potter Stewart concurring), the Supreme Court turned Uphaus down. The critical difference between Uphaus and Nelson, said the court, was that evidence in Steve Nelson's case had indicated activities not against a state but against the Federal Government. Wrote Justice Clark: "All the [Nelson] opinion proscribed was a race between federal and state prosecutors to the courthouse door. The opinion made clear that a State could proceed with prosecutions for sedition against the State itself." In a dissent written by Justice William Brennan and joined by Chief Justice Warren and Justices Hugo Black and William Douglas, the court's staunchly civil righteous minority protested that the entire New Hampshire investigation of Uphaus was "exposure purely for the sake of exposure."

From Watkins to Barenblatt. In 1957, the Supreme Court voted 6 to 1 against the contempt-of-Congress conviction of John Watkins, onetime official of the Red-led Farm Equipment Workers International Union, who had refused to answer House un-American Activities Committee questions about Communism. The court's opinion, written by Chief Justice Warren, included a scathing denunciation of congressional investigative activities; critics of the opinion argued that in trying to put a rein on congressional investigators, the court instead had come up with a noose.

But last week, in the case of a onetime Vassar psychology instructor named Lloyd Barenblatt, who, like Watkins, had refused to answer House un-American Activities Committee questions, the Supreme Court made some vital distinctions. With the voting breakdown among the justices the same as in Uphaus, Justice Harlan, writing the majority opinion, pointed out that what the court really meant in Watkins was that congressional questions must be pertinent to legislative inquiry--and congressional committees must explain that pertinency to witnesses. But unlike Watkins, Barenblatt had not challenged the pertinence of committee questions; instead, he had relied on constitutional freedoms of speech and opinion. Wrote Harlan: "The scope of the [congressional] power of inquiry ... is as penetrating and far-reaching as the potential power to enact and appropriate under the Constitution . . . Congressional efforts to learn the extent of a nationwide, indeed worldwide problem have brought one of its investigating committees into the field of education . . . This court will always be on the alert against intrusion by Congress into this constitutionally protected domain. But this does not mean that the Congress is precluded from interrogating a witness merely because he is a teacher."

The dissent, written by Justice Black, argued that "the interest of the people [lies] in being able to join organizations, advocate causes and make political 'mistakes' without later being subjected to government penalties."

The process of living under a rule of law requires, by its very nature, changes of direction and shifts of emphasis in the conception, interpretation and administration of the law. In its earlier, bitterly criticized decisions in security cases, the Supreme Court was perhaps reacting naturally enough to the excesses of the McCarthy era. But in its decisions last week the court steered a truer course between the public interest and the rights of the individual than it had in a long while.

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