Word: assertional
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...refusing to cooperate with the Velde and Jenner committees the witnesses are asserting their constitutional right to freedom of speech, belief, conscience and assembly. The Supreme Court has not consented to hear such First Amendment claims in recent cases involving congressional investigations. That is not a reason for failing to assert rights which the individual citizen believes that he possesses. The denial of certiorari, we are told repeatedly, is not an adjudication by the Supermen Court. The Court has frequently changed its mind in the past where it has come to realize the significance of the problem presented...
...upon the First Amendment may not avoid a committee citation for contempt. Hence, so many witnesses in recent years have relied upon the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which states that persons may not be required to act as witnesses against themselves. It is particularly appropriate to assert the privilege here since it had its origins in the protection of political and religious dissidence in the Puritan period in England. The First Amendment rights of freedom of speech, belief and religion were protected by the Puritans' refusal to bear witness against themselves in proceedings before the High Commission...
...Failure to assert the constitutional privilege means that the witness must relate to Messrs. Velde and Jenner all he knows about his friends and family. Is this not contrary to basic moral values? I take my teaching here from Professor Chafee, who has told us of Francis Jenks, who had criticized the policies of Charles the Second at a public meeting. When the King demanded his advisors' names, he said: "To name any particular person (if there were such) would be a mean and unworthy thing, therefore I desire to be excused from all farther answer to such questions...
...Coolidge for not doing enough to aid the farmers. He attacked Herbert Hoover's Treasury Secretary Andy Mellon for cutting taxes. In 1931, alarmed by mounting unemployment, he warned: "Congress should devote its energies ... to the enactment of a relief program . . . The time has come for Congress to assert its leadership." Young Bob soon took his place in the G.O.P. opposition with such towering progressives as Hiram Johnson and George Norris...
...defendants . . . assert that they seek justice, not mercy. What they seek, they have attained." So stated Judge Irving Kaufman in refusing to reduce the sentence...