Blistering Dissent

Suppose there was a national emergency. And suppose a key labor union was dominated by Communists who called a political strike, crippling the nation's effort to meet the crisis.

That thought haunted the authors of the Landrum-Griffin Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959. To guard against the possibility, they made it a crime for a Communist Party member to hold union office. Among the first to be tried under the provision was San Francisco Longshoreman Archie Brown, an open Communist for more than 25 years and a member of his local's executive board. In 1962 Brown was convicted and sentenced to six months in prison. He appealed, and last week, by a 5 to 4 decision in a session-ending spate of activity (see THE LAW), the U.S. Supreme Court upheld him. The majority opinion, written by Chief Justice Earl Warren, declared that the Landrum-Griffin provision was a bill of attainder,* and therefore unconstitutional.

"Even assuming that Congress had reason to conclude that some Communists would use union positions to bring about political strikes," Warren said, "it cannot automatically be inferred that all members share their evil purposes or participate in their illegal activities. We do not hold today that Congress cannot weed dangerous persons out of the labor movement . . .

Rather, we make again the point: that Congress must accomplish such results by rules of general applicability. It cannot specify the people upon whom the sanction it prescribes is to be levied."

The minority opinion, written by Justice Byron White, took blistering exception. "The Communist Party's illegal purpose and its domination by foreign power have already been adjudicated, both administratively and judicially," snapped White. If a Communist "must be apprehended in the act of calling one political strike in one act of disloyalty before steps can be taken to exclude him from office, there is little or nothing left of the preventive or prophylactic function" of the provision.

In any event, the U.S. now has no effective legal way of keeping Communists out of union power.

* A legislative act inflicting punishment--in this case loss of union office--without court trial.

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