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The Last Best Hope Justice Hugo L. Black August 1961 [The continued whittling away of basic American liberties by the U.S. Supreme Court has no more articulate and courageous opponent than Justice Hugo L. Black. Typical of the magniWcent if losing battles he has been waging was his dissenting opinion in the recent case Communist Party of the United States of America v. Subversive Activities Control Board. The Progressive is happy to present a condensed version of Justice Black’s memorable decision, which received so little attention in the nation’s press.— The Editors.] I do not believe that it can be too often repeated that the freedoms of speech, press, petition, and assembly guaranteed by the First Amendment must be accorded to the ideas we hate, or sooner or later they will be denied to the ideas we cherish. The Wrst banning of an association because it advocates hated ideas, whether that association be called a political party or not, marks a fateful moment in the history of a free country . That moment seems to have arrived for this country. The Subversive Activities Control Act of 1950 here involved deWnes “Communist action” organizations and requires them to register with the Attorney General, giving much information of every kind with regard to their property, income, activities, and members. The Communist Party has been ordered to register under that Act by the Subversive Activities Control Board and has challenged the validity of that order on the ground, among others, that the Act is unconstitutional in that it amounts to a complete outlawry of the Communist Party. The contention is that this Act, considered as a whole and in its relation to existing laws which a¤ect members of the Party, imposes such overhanging threats of disgrace, humiliation, Wnes, forfeitures, and lengthy imprisonments upon registered organizations and their members, most of which burdens become e¤ective automatically upon registration, that it will be impossible for the Party to continue to function if the registration order is upheld. The plan of the Act is to make it impossible for an organization to continue to function once a registration order is issued against it. To this end, the Act Wrst provides crushing penalties to ensure complete compliance with the disclosure requirements of . . . registration. Thus, if the Party or its members fail to register within the time required by the Act, or if they fail to make annual reports as required, or to keep records as required, each individual guilty of such failure can be punished by a Wne of $10,000, by imprisonment for Wve years, or both, for each o¤ense, and each o¤ense means “each day of failure to register” or “each listing of the name or address of any one individual” either by the organization or by an individual. Thus, for a delay of thirty days in Wling required reports, a Wne of $300,000 and imprisonment for 150 years could be imposed by a trial judge. 16 part 1 championing civil liberties Having thus made it mandatory that Communist organizations and individual Communists make a full disclosure of their identities and activities, the Act then proceeds to heap burden after burden upon those so exposed. Certain tax deductions allowed to others are denied to a registered organization. Mail matter must be stamped before the organization sends it out to show that it was disseminated by a “Communist action” organization, with all the treasonable connotations given that term by the recitals of “fact” in the Act. Members of a registered organization cannot hold certain jobs with the government, or any jobs with private businesses engaged in doing certain work for the government. Members cannot use or attempt to use a passport and cannot even make application for a passport without being subject to a penalty of Wve years in the penitentiary. The Act thus makes it extremely diªcult for a member of the Communist Party to live in this country and, at the same time, makes it a crime for him to try to get a passport to get out. This whole Act, with its pains and penalties, embarks this country, for the Wrst time, on the dangerous adventure of outlawing groups that preach doctrines nearly all Americans detest. When the practice of outlawing parties and various public groups begins, no one can say where it will end. In most countries such a practice once begun ends with a one-party government. Talk about the desirability of revolution...

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