The Truman Court by Rawn James

Author:Rawn James [James, Rawn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General, United States, 20th Century, Political Science, American Government, Judicial Branch, Executive Branch
ISBN: 9780826274564
Google: SoIjEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
Published: 2021-06-07T22:10:43+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY

Civil Liberties and Loyalty

CHIEF JUSTICE VINSON OPENED THE Supreme Court’s new term on October 3, 1949, by remembering Justices Frank Murphy and Wiley Rutledge. “Saddened by our losses,” he said from the bench, “but inspired by the examples of devotion to duty which Mr. Justice Murphy and Mr. Justice Rutledge have provided for us, we turn to the work before us.” When the Court issued its decisions months later, one Yale Law School professor wrote that “the work before us” to which Vinson referred appeared to consist largely of “rejecting the work and philosophy of the late justices.”1

All four of Truman’s appointees were on the Court. During the 1949–50 term, every major decision the Court handed down supported the administration’s legal positions. Vinson’dissent rate dropped from 13 percent in his first three terms to just 4 percent.2 The landmark cases decided during the opening years of the full Truman Court were significant because most of them concerned questions of civil rights or civil liberties. In the civil rights cases, the justices often reached unanimous decisions as they, led by the NAACP’s legal team and Department of Justice appellate lawyers, began to steadily chip away at the legal vestiges of slavery in the American South.

In the civil liberties cases, however, the Court remained sharply divided. It was cleaved by questions such as whether the rights of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly extended to Communists and subversives who rejected the American form of government. Two legal observers wrote at the time that “the greatest single problem confronting the Supreme Court” was “the task of reconciling our traditional concepts of individual liberty, particularly freedom of expression, with the demands of national security.”3

* * *

Just a few months before Vinson opened the 1949–50 term, on March 8, 1949, a World War II Army veteran and Syracuse University college student named Irving Feiner sought to advertise a political event taking place later that night at the Syracuse Hotel. He placed a wooden soapbox on the corner of South McBride and Harrison Streets in Syracuse, New York; attached a loudspeaker system to a parked car; and began railing for and against this and that in an attempt to spur interest in the meeting to be held a few hours later. Speaking in a “loud, high-pitched voice,” Feiner gathered listeners to whom his friends handed leaflets. He declared that the mayor of Syracuse was a “champagne-sipping bum” and that Truman was also “a bum.” The American Legion were “Gestapo Nazi agents” and large swaths of Syracuse were “run by corrupt politicians.”4

Before long, his audience grew to more than seventy-five people: fellow students and professionals, women and men, and—as police officers, judges, and justices took pains to note—Black and White Americans alike. The integrated crowd spilled from the sidewalk into the intersection, forcing pedestrians to walk in the street and disrupting vehicular traffic. Some in the audience began to heckle Feiner. Before long, a nearby resident called the police. Officers named Flynn and Cook arrived

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