Word: barth
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...subcommittee. Its parent committee was originally designed, Furry's lawyers claim, to oversee only the General Accounting Office and the Bureau of the Budget, and was delegated the task of "studying the operation of government activities at all levels with a view to determining its economy and efficiency." Alan Barth, editorial writer of the Washington Post and a sharp critic of congressional investigative techniques, has argued that "It is one thing to strip Congress of its investigatory power and quite another to strip a committee of power which Congress never delegated to it... The deference due Congress...
Refusal to inform solely on grounds of conscience and moral duty has been defended most eloquently by Barth. "A witness who feels certain that the persons with whom he was associated in the party were as idealistic and misguided as himself, and were as innocent of espionage or sabotage or any criminal activity, can in good faith refuse to expose them to odium and humiliation. He writes, "if these persons have left the party and established respectable positions for themselves which would be destroyed by his disclosures, he can understandably be unwilling to offer them and their families...
Telford Taylor, another recent writer on the problems of investigations, share many of Barth's criticisms of investigative practices. But he takes a much more restricted view of all individual's moral right to refuse testimony about others...
Taylor does express serious doubts as to whether the McCarthy committee met the test of proper authority when Furry testified before it; he finds a possible moral justification for Furry's action in the procedural elements of the case, if not in the generalized claim of individual conscience that Barth is willing to allow...
...Cohn, Alan Barth, and Ralph S. Brown, Jr., will discuss "Loyalty, Security, and the Individual." Barth has written "The Loyalty of free Men," and Brown is the author of a forthcoming book on Law and security. Richard H. field '26, professor of Law, will moderate...