Hannah v. Larche Hannah/Concurrence Frankfurter

by Felix Frankfurter

United States Supreme Court

363 U.S. 420

John A. HANNAH et al., Appellants,  v.  Margaret M. LARCHE et al. John A. HANNAH et al., Petitioners,

Mr. Justice FRANKFURTER, concurring in the result.

The United States Commission on Civil Rights, in exercising powers granted to it by the Civil Rights Act of 1957 (71 Stat. 635, 42 U.S.C. § 1975c, 42 U.S.C.A. § 1975c), scheduled a hearing to be held by it in Shreveport, Louisiana, on July 13, 1959. By these two actions judgments were sought to declare the proposed hearing illegal and to restrain the members of the Commission from holding it.

The rules of procedure formulated by the Commission amply rest on leave of Congress. I need add nothing on this phase of the case to the Court's opinion. While it is a most salutary doctrine of constitutional adjudication to give a statute even a strained construction to avoid facing a serious doubt of constitutionality, 'avoidance of a difficulty will not be pressed to the point of disingenuous evasion. Here the intention of the Congress is revealed too distinctly to permit us to ignore it because of mere misgivings as to power. The problem must be faced and answered.' Moore Ice Cream Co. v. Rose, 289 U.S. 373, 379, 53 S.Ct. 620, 622, 77 L.Ed. 1265. I have no such misgivings in the situation before us. I also agree with the Court's conclusion in rejecting the constitutional claims of the clients. In view, however, of divergences between the Court's analysis and mine of the specific issues before us, including the authoritative relevance of In re Groban, 352 U.S. 330, 77 S.Ct. 510, 1 L.Ed.2d 376 and Anonymous Nos. 6 and 7 v. Baker, 360 U.S. 287, 79 S.Ct. 1157, 3 L.Ed.2d 1234, I state my reasons for agreement.

To conduct the Shreveport hearing on the basis of sworn allegations of wrongdoing by the plaintiffs, without submitting to them these allegations and disclosing the identities of the affiants, would, it is claimed, violate the Constitution. The issue thus raised turns exclusively on the application of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. The Commission's hearing are not proceedings requiring a person to answer for an 'infamous crime,' which must be based on an indictment of a grand jury (Amendment V), nor are they 'criminal prosecutions' giving an accused the rights defined by Amendment VI. Since due process is the constitutional axis on which decision must turn, our concern is not with absolutes, either of governmental power or of safeguards protecting individuals. Inquiry must be directed to the validity of the adjustment between these clashing interests-that of Government and of the individual, respectively-in the procedural scheme devised by the Congress and the Commission. Whether the scheme satisfies those strivings for justice which due process guarantees, must be judged in the light of reason drawn from the considerations of fairness that reflect our traditions of legal and political thought, duly related to the public interest Congress sought to meet by this legislation as against the hazards or hardship to the individual that the Commission procedure would entail.

Barring rare lapses, this Court has not unduly confined those who have the responsibility of governing within a doctrinaire conception of 'due process.' The Court has been mindful of the manifold variety and perplexity of the tasks which the Constitution has vested in the legislative and executive branches of the Government by recognizing that what is unfair in one situation may be fair in another. Compare, for instance, Den ex dem Murray v. Hoboken Land & Improvement Co., 18 How. 272, 15 L.Ed. 372, with Ng Fung Ho v. White, 259 U.S. 276, 42 S.Ct. 492, 66 L.Ed. 938, and see Federal Communications Comm. v. WJR, 337 U.S. 265, 275, 69 S.Ct. 1097, 1103, 93 L.Ed. 1353. Whether the procedure now questioned offends 'the rudiments of fair play,' Chicago, M. & St. P.R. Co. v. Polt, 232 U.S. 165, 168, 34 S.Ct. 301, 58 L.Ed. 554, is not to be tested by loose generalities or sentiments abstractly appealing. The precise nature of the interest alleged to be adversely affected or of the freedom of action claimed to be curtailed, the manner in which this is to be done and the reasons for doing it, the balance of individual hurt and the justifying public good-these and such like are the considerations, avowed or implicit, that determine the judicial judgment when appeal is made to 'due process.'

The proposed Shreveport hearing creates risks of harm to the plaintiffs. It is likewise true that, were the plaintiffs afforded the procedural rights they seek, they would have a greater opportunity to reduce these risks than will be theirs under the questioned rules of the Commission. Some charges touching the plaintiffs might be withdrawn or modified, if those making them knew that their identities and the content of their charges were to be revealed. By the safeguards they seek the plaintiffs might use the hearing as a forum for subjecting the charges against them to a scrutiny that might disprove them or, at least, establish that they are not incompatible with innocent conduct.

Were the Commission exercising an accusatory function, were its duty to find that named individuals were responsible for wrongful deprivation of voting rights and to advertise such finding or to serve as part of the process of criminal prosecution, the rigorous protections relevant to criminal prosecutions might well be the controlling starting point for assessing the protection which the Commission's procedure provides. The objectives of the Commission on Civil Rights, the purpose of its creation, and its true functioning are quite otherwise. It is not charged with official judgment on individuals nor are its inquiries so directed. The purpose of its investigations is to develop facts upon which legislation may be based. As such, its investigations are directed to those concerns that are the normal impulse to legislation and the basis for it. To impose upon the Commission's investigations the safeguards appropriate to inquiries into individual blameworthiness would be to divert and frustrate its purpose. Its investigation would be turned into a forum for the litigation of individual culpability matters which are not within the keeping of the Commission, with which it is not effectively equipped to deal, and which would deflect it from the purpose for which it was within its limited life established.

We would be shutting our eyes to actualities to be unmindful of the fact that it would dissuade sources of vitally relevant information from making that information known to the Commission, if the Commission were required to reveal its sources and subject them to cross-examination. This would not be a valid consideration for secrecy were the Commission charged with passing official incriminatory or even defamatory judgment on individuals. Since the Commission is merely an investigatorial arm of Congress, the narrow risk of unintended harm to the individual is outweighed by the legislative justification for permitting the Commission to be the critic and protector of the information given it. It would be wrong not to assume that the Commission will responsibly scrutinize the reliability of sworn allegations that are to serve as the basis for further investigation and that it will be rigorously vigilant to protect the fair name of those brought into question.

In appraising the constitutionally permissive investigative procedure claimed to subject individuals to incrimination or defamation without adequate opportunity for de ense, a relevant distinction is between those proceedings which are preliminaries to official judgments on individuals and those, like the investigation of this Commission, charged with responsibility to gather information as a solid foundation for legislative action. Judgments by the Commission condemning or stigmatizing individuals are not called for. When official pronouncements on individuals purport to rest on evidence and investigation, it is right to demand that those so accused be given a full opportunity for their defense in such investigation, excepting, of course, grand jury investigations. The functions of that institution and its constitutional prerogatives are rooted in long centuries of Anglo-American history. On the other hand, to require the introduction of adversary contests relevant to determination of individual guilt into what is in effect a legislative investigation is bound to thwart it by turning it into a serious digression from its purpose.

The cases in which this Court has recently considered claims to procedural rights in investigative inquiries alleged to deal unfairly with the reputation of individuals or to incriminate them, have made clear that the fairness of their procedures is to be judged in light of the purpose of the inquiry, and, more particularly, whether its essential objective is official judgment on individuals under scrutiny. Such a case was Greene v. McElroy, 360 U.S. 474, 79 S.Ct. 1400, 3 L.Ed.2d 1377. There the inquiry was for the purpose of determining whether the security clearance of a particular person was to be revoked. A denial of clearance would shut him off from the opportunity of access to a wide field of employment. The Court concluded that serious constitutional questions were raised by denial of the rights to confront accusatory witnesses and to have access to unfavorable reports on the basis of which the very livelihood of an individual would be gravely jeopardized. Again, Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee v. McGrath, 341 U.S. 123, 71 S.Ct. 624, 95 L.Ed. 817, presented a contrasting situation to the one before us. The Government there sought through the Attorney General to designate organizations as 'Communist,' thus furnishing grounds on which to discharge their members from government employment. No notice was given of the charges against the organizations nor were they given an opportunity to establish the innocence of their aims and acts. It was well within the realities to say of what was under scrutiny in Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee v. McGrath that 'It would be blindness * * * not be recognize that in the conditions of our time such designation drastically restricts the organizations, if it does not proscribe them.' 341 U.S. at page 161, 71 S.Ct. at page 643 (concurring opinion). And the procedure which was found constitutionally wanting in that case could be fairly characterized as action 'to maim or decapitate, on the mere say-so of the Attorney General, an organization to all outward-seeming engaged in lawful objectives * * *.' Ibid. Nothing like such characterization can remotely be made regarding the procedure for the proposed inquiry of the Commission on Civil Rights.

Contrariwise, decisions arising under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment strongly support the constitutionality of what is here challenged, where the purposes were as here truly investigatorial. Thus, In re Groban, 352 U.S. 330, 77 S.Ct. 510, 1 L.Ed.2d 376, sustained inquiry by the Ohio State Fire Marshal into the causes of a fire while excluding counsel of subpoenaed witnesses on whose premises the fire occurred. The Court so held even though the Fire Marshal had authority, after questioning a witness, to arrest him if he believed there was sufficient evidence to charge him with arson. The guiding consideration was that, although suspects might be discovered, the essential purpose of the Fire Marshal's inquiry was not to adjudicate individual responsibility for the fire but to purs e a legislative policy of fire prevention through the discovery of the origins of fires. This decision was applied in Anonymous Nos. 6 and 7 v. Baker, 360 U.S. 287, at page 288, 79 S.Ct. 1157, at page 1158, 3 L.Ed.2d 1234, which concerned 'a state judicial Inquiry into alleged improper practices at the local bar'. Rejecting the claim based on the consideration that the inquiry might serve as a groundwork for the prosecution of witnesses called before it, the Court applied Groban because the inquiry was a general one and appellants were before it not as potential accused but 'solely as witnesses.' The proposed investigation of the Commission on Civil Rights is much less likely to result in prosecution of witnesses before it than were the investigations in Groban and Baker. Just as surely, there is not present in the cases now before us a drastic official judgment, as in Greene and Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee, where the Court deemed it necessary to insure that full opportunity for defense be accorded to individuals who were the specific, adverse targets of the secret process.

Moreover, the limited, investigatorial scope of the challenged hearing is carefully hedged in with protections for the plaintiffs. They will have the right to be accompanied by counsel. The rules insure that they will be made aware of the subject of the hearings. They will have the right to appeal to the Commission's power to subpoena additional witnesses. The rules significantly direct the Commission to abstain from public exposure by taking in executive session any evidence or testimony tending 'to defame, degrade, or incriminate any person.' A person so affected is given the right to read such evidence and to reply to it. These detailed provisions are obviously designed as safeguards against injury to persons who appear in public hearings before the Commission. The provision for screening defamatory and incriminatory testimony in order to keep it from the public may well be contrasted with the procedure in the Joint Anti-Fascist case, where the very purpose of the inquiry was to make an official judgment that certain organizations were 'Communist.' Such condemnation of an organization would of course taint its members. The rules of the Commission manifest a sense of its responsibility in carrying out the limited investigatorial task confided to it. It is not a constitutional requirement that the Commission be argumentatively turned into a forum for trial of the truth of particular allegations of denial of voting rights in order thereby to invalidate its functioning. Such an inadmissible transformation of the Commission's function is in essence what is involved in the claims of the plaintiffs. Congress has entrusted the Commission with a very different role-that of investigating and appraising general conditions and reporting them to Congress so as to inform the legislative judgment. Resort to a legislative commission as a vehicle for proposing well-founded legislation and recommending its passage to Congress has ample precedent.

Finally it should be noted that arguments directed either at the assumed novelty of employing the Commission in the area of legislative interest which led Congress to its establishment, or at the fact that the source of the Commission's procedures were those long used by Committees of Congress, are not particularly relevant. History may satisfy constitutionality, but constitutionality need not produce the title deeds of history. Mere age may establish due process, but due process does not preclude new ends of government or new means for achieving them. Since the Commission has, within its legislative framework, provided procedural safeguards appropriate to its proper function, claims of unfairness offending due process fall. The proposed Shreveport hearing fully comports with the Constitution and the law. Accordingly I join the judgment of the Court in reversing the District Court.

Mr. Justice HARLAN, whom Mr. Justice CLARK joins, concurring.

In joining the Court's opinion, as I do, I desire to add that in my view the principles established by In re Groban, 352 U.S. 330, 77 S.Ct. 510, 1 L.Ed.2d 376, and Anonymous Nos. 6 and 7 v. Baker, 360 U.S. 287, 79 S.Ct. 1157, 3 L.Ed.2d 1234, are dispositive of the issues herein in the Commission's favor.

Mr. Justice DOUGLAS, with whom Mr. Justice BLACK concu s, dissenting.

Notes