Word: answerable
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Watkins thought that by asking such questions the committee was tramping on his rights under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution ("Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech ... or the right of the people peaceably to assemble''). For his refusal to answer, John Watkins was convicted of contempt of Congress, was fined $500 and given a suspended sentence of a year in jail...
...element of a criminal offense." But because the House Un-American Activities Committee operates under such vague auspices ("Who," asked Warren, "can define the meaning of 'un-American'?"), Witness Watkins was "not accorded a fair opportunity to determine whether he was within his rights in refusing to answer." Conclusion: "His conviction is necessarily invalid under the Due Process Clause." With that ruling went a gratuitous warning to Congress: in the future dot all the i's and cross all the t's in spelling out committee jurisdiction and legislative purpose with "particularity...
While admitting that he was a "classical Marxist," Sweezy refused to answer some questions (e.g., had he advocated Marxism at a university lecture?) put to him by the New Hampshire attorney general acting on authorization from the state legislature. The New Hampshire Supreme Court upheld Sweezy's conviction for contempt on grounds that 1) "there exists a potential menace from those who would overthrow the Government by force and violence," and 2) "the need for the legislature to be informed on so elemental a subject as the self-preservation of Government outweighed the deprivation of constitutional rights that occurred...
...which confronts an investigating committee is a formidable one indeed. It must go into records, accounts, business files, public files . . . Witnesses have declined to answer questions from time to time. The chief reason advanced has been that the testimony related to purely private affairs. In each instance with which I am familiar, the House and Senate have steadfastly adhered to their right to compel reply, and the witness has either answered or been imprisoned...
Aron has no categorical answer to the question that troubles every Frenchman: Can a French minority remain, one million against eight million, in an Algerian Republic? But, he warns, "the longer the pacifying war continues, the more the chances of peaceful cohabitation between the two communities diminish." In the long run the men who govern an Algerian Republic, "unless they are carried away by mad blindness, cannot ignore the need they will have of France." For Aron the crux of the question is the formation of this Algerian state-"a difficult enterprise, and nobody can guarantee its success...