Mejorando el porcentaje de actividades planeadas completadas (PPC)
CAPÍTULO 6. FLUJO DE INFORMACIÓN DE LA LOGÍSTICA DE MATERIALES
6.3 La importancia de la información en el proceso de toma de decisiones
Dennis
v. United States, 1951
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Background of the Case
★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★Many Americans have had mixed feelings about whether political radicals such as
Communists should have the free speech protection provided by the First Amendment, since their presumed purpose is to overthrow the United States government. This feeling was particularly prevalent in the 1940s and during the Cold War with the Soviet Union. American Communists were suspected of being agents of the Soviet Union, and in 1940 Congress enacted the Smith Act, which made it illegal to teach or advocate the violent overthrow of the United States government.
When the government convicted Communists under the Smith Act, the Supreme Court faced the challenge of deciding whether this law was constitutional. In 1949 Eugene Dennis and 10 co-defendants, all leaders of the United States Communist Party, were convicted of violating the Smith Act during a stormy, nine-month New York District Court trial.
In his instructions to the jury, the trial judge said that it would not be enough to convict the defendants if they had only taught or conspired to teach subversion. He instructed the jury that it must be satisfied that the defendants had an intent to cause the overthrow or destruction of the government of the United States by force and violence, and as speedily as circumstances would permit. The jury convicted the defendants of having violated the Smith Act. The defendants appealed their convictions to the United States Supreme Court, maintaining that their rights to freedom of speech had been compromised.
Constitutional Issue
★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★The central questions in this case were these: Did the Smith Act unconstitutionally limit the rights of free press and speech under the First Amendment? Did the act conflict with the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of due process of law?
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The Supreme Court’s Decision
★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★The Court held 6 to 2 (one justice did not participate in deciding the case) that the Smith Act was constitutional. The majority opinion was written by Chief Justice Fred Vinson, although there were also two concurring opinions. The Court first supported the power of Congress to protect itself against rebellion, especially since “the existing structure of the government provides for peaceful and orderly change.” The true question, however, “is not whether Congress has such power, but whether the means conflict with the First and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution.”
The defendants had claimed that the Smith Act amounted to a prohibition even of academic discussion of Marxist or Communist thought. The Court rejected this contention, stating that the act “is directed at advocacy, not discussion.”
At this point the Court’s examination shifted to the circumstances under which free speech may be limited. The primary precedent case had been Schenck v. United States (1919), in which
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Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes had devised the “clear and present danger” test. Holmes had explained, the “question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circum- stances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.”
Vinson now attempted to develop a more precise determination of the meaning of the clear and present danger principle. He cited the opinion of the first appeals of Judge Learned Hand, who wrote the majority opinion in this case when it was in the intermediate appellate court. Hand had interpreted the principle this way: “In each case [courts] must ask whether the gravity of the ‘evil’ discounted by its improbability, justifies such invasion of free speech as is necessary to avoid the danger.” Hand adapted Holmes’s principle to a test of “clear and probable danger.” This principle made it easy for the Court to deal with the issues of conspiracy and advocacy. The Communist Party of the United States was characterized as a highly organized conspiracy, with rigidly disciplined members subject to call when the leaders felt that the time had come for action. In other words, the danger or threat of rebellion already existed, although no overt action had been taken yet. Vinson concluded that “this analysis disposes of the contention that a conspiracy to advocate, as distinguished from the advocacy itself, cannot be constitutionally restrained, because it compromises only presentation. It is the existence of the conspiracy which creates the danger. . . .”
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Dissenting Opinion
★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★Justices Hugo Black and William O. Douglas felt that the clear and present danger test had been destroyed by the majority decision. Douglas emphasized that the defendants had been charged with no overt acts. Rather, they had been charged only for their speeches and publica- tions. He also felt that the matter of clear and present danger should have been decided by the trial court’s jury and not by the Supreme Court.
DIRECTIONS: Answer the following questions on a separate sheet of paper.
1. What test did the Smith Act have to meet in order to be declared constitutional?
2. What was the main difference between Justice Vinson’s opinion and the opinions of Justices Black and
Douglas?
3. Suppose you had written an essay during the same time period as the Dennis case, in which you stated
that you believed that the government of the United States should be overthrown. You did not show the essay to anyone, but someone found it among your papers. Do you think you would have been found guilty of violating the Smith Act? Explain.
4. Do you believe that people who belong to an organization whose objectives are clearly opposed to
democratic principles are entitled to protection under the Constitution? Give reasons for your answer.
5. Ten years after the Court’s Dennis decision, the Supreme Court unanimously set aside a conviction
under the Smith Act of a member of the Communist Party. What reasons might the Court have given for its 1961 decision?