Word: courting
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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From Nelson to Uphaus. In 1956, a 6-to-3 decision of the Supreme Court reversed the Pennsylvania conviction of Communist Leader Steve Nelson on state sedition charges. Said the majority opinion written by Chief Justice Warren: Federal regulations against subversive activity were so "pervasive" that "Congress left no room for the states to supplement [them]." By its language, the opinion seemed to be kicking the states completely out of the antisedition field...
...last week's decisions sharply narrowed the scope of Nelson. The case was brought before the Supreme Court by one Willard C.Uphaus, head of a pacifist, left-wing organization called World Fellowship, Inc., who had refused to produce a list of guests at a fellowship summer camp when asked for it by New Hampshire's Attorney General during an investigation authorized by the state legislature. Ordered by state courts to hand over the list or go to jail, Uphaus appealed, relying heavily on Nelson...
Last week, in an opinion written by Justice Tom Clark (Justices Felix Frankfurter, John Marshall Harlan, Charles Evans Whittaker and Potter Stewart concurring), the Supreme Court turned Uphaus down. The critical difference between Uphaus and Nelson, said the court, was that evidence in Steve Nelson's case had indicated activities not against a state but against the Federal Government. Wrote Justice Clark: "All the [Nelson] opinion proscribed was a race between federal and state prosecutors to the courthouse door. The opinion made clear that a State could proceed with prosecutions for sedition against the State itself." In a dissent...
From Watkins to Barenblatt. In 1957, the Supreme Court voted 6 to 1 against the contempt-of-Congress conviction of John Watkins, onetime official of the Red-led Farm Equipment Workers International Union, who had refused to answer House un-American Activities Committee questions about Communism. The court's opinion, written by Chief Justice Warren, included a scathing denunciation of congressional investigative activities; critics of the opinion argued that in trying to put a rein on congressional investigators, the court instead had come up with a noose...
...about the 1958 order handed down by Washington's Federal District Judge F. Dickinson Letts. That order, arising from a suit against Hoffa by 13 rank-and-file Teamsters, placed the racket-ridden, goon-directed union under the supervision of a three-member board of court-appointed monitors. But Hoffa blithely declared that the monitors' recommendations were purely advisory, ignored them completely ("O.K., you've advised me; I reject your advice"), looked forward confidently to the day when Judge Letts's order would be dissolved by an appellate court. Last week Jimmy Hoffa got the shock...