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May 2, 1953

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The Bill of Rights Survives a New Attack

names of all contributors and there

all loans

going to produce the names of people who bought books because under the Bill of Rights that is beyond the power of your committee to investigate."

N an important Supreme Court opinion a few weeks ago, Justice William O. Douglas struck and other transactions. But he added, "I'm not blow for liberty which has been too little noticed. One reason for the apparent blackout of "liberal" comment on this decision is probably the fact that Edward A. Rumely, the man who won this important battle for freedom of the press, represents the so-called "Right." Had he been a communist or a member of some bizarre religious sect, we should have heard a great deal more about his case.

It will be recalled that Doctor Rumely, as secretary for the Committee for Constitutional Government, was ordered by a congressional committee investigating lobbying to turn over to the committee a list of all purchasers of books which the committee had been selling to its members and others sympathetic to its ideas. The idea was that Doctor Rumely's outfit was attempting to influence Congress via the public. This was supposed to be lobbying.

In the course of his appearance on June 6, 1950, before the committee, of which the late Congressman Frank Buchanan was chairman, Doctor Rumely said that he was willing to produce the

The House cited Doctor Rumely for contempt of Congress, and his case dragged along through the Federal courts until it reached the Supreme Court, where the right of Doctor Rumely and all other Americans to publish and circulate books without supplying the names of the buyers to public authority was unanimously sustained.

Concurring with Justice Frankfurter's majority opinion, Justice Douglas wrote:

"We have here a publisher who through books and pamphlets seeks to reach the minds and hearts of the American people.... Like the publishers of newspapers magazines, or books, this publisher bids for the mines of men in the marketplace of ideas.... The command that 'Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech or of the press' has behind it a long history. It expresses the confidence that the safety of society depends on the tolerance

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of Government for hostile as well as friendly criticism, that in a community where men's minds are free, there must be room for the unorthodox as well as the orthodox views."

It would be difficult to find two sets of ideas more hostile to each other than those of Justice Douglas and the Committee for Constitutional Government. The justice's opinion does honor to his integrity and his ability to interpret American doctrine without regard for his taste in ideologies. Coming to the central issue of whether the publication and distribution of books can be penalized under a statute to control lobbying, Justice Douglas wrote: "Once the Government can demand of a publisher the names of the purchasers of his publications, the free press as we know it disappears. Then the specter of a Government agent will look over the shoulder of everyone who reads."

It seems to us that the Supreme Court's verdict in the Rumely case belongs with those important decisions by the court which in critical times put America more firmly on the right course, the course in line with her historic traditions.

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