Page 36 - Report on the National Lawyers Guild, legal bulwark of the Communist Party

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THE NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD
COMMUNIST PARTY, U. S. A.
The indictments should be dismissed (From the Briefs on the Unconstitu- tionaUty of the Smith Act, Political Affairs, November 1948, pp. 1026-
(Ibid., p. 1015).
NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD
1032).
It is thus made abundantly clear
The persecution of the Communist that a government is attempting by the Party and its members has for some time use of the law and courts to eliminate now been an avowed governmental political opposition. This strikes at the objective. A campaign of calumny and vitals of our whole democratic process slander emanating from governmental sources has accompanied every legal device used by officialdom to limit the activities and silence the voice of this Party and its members * * * w^g witness every day * * * ^^g label of "Communist" and "subversive" placed upon persons whose only crime appears to be hostility towards present day governmental policy, domestic or for-
What is needed here in an all-out
mass campaign that will * * * gg.
cure the dismissal of -the Grand Jury
indictments against our Party, repeal
the "Loyalty order" and the Smith
*** —
Act (The Fascist Danger
and How To Combat It Eugene Den-
nis, Political Affairs, September, 1948, pp. 795, 796) .
eign.
There can be no talk of freedom if the
ideas of the Communist Party are suppressed. * * * \Yg ^all for a re- peal of the Smith Act and the end of all prosecutions thereunder (Resolutions of February 1949, National Convention, National Lawyers Guild, Lawyers Guild Review, vol. IX, No. 1, Winter 1949, p. 52).
* * *
Our attack is upon the grand jury,
•the petit jury panels, all panels, all of see that juries are fair and impartial,
the lists from which both grand and and fairly represent a cross section of
petit juries are drawn, and indeed, the the community; and to halt a prosecu- entire system of jury selection here tion where such fair and impartial jury {The Federal Jury is stacked Against does not exist. It is time for Courts, You, Marion Bachrach, Communist and legislatures to overhaul the entire Party Defense Committee, New York, method of selecting juries to the end
that justice shall be fairly adminis- istered (Ibid., p. 53).
On March 2, 1949, the New York Chapter of the Guild filed an amicus curiae brief in the case of the Com- munist Party leaders supporting a de- fense motion to quash the indictment on the ground that the jury lists, which were the source of the Grand and Petit Jury, were illegally selected and constituted {Guild Lawyer, Spring 1949. pp. 12 and 13).
A committee of prominent attorneys dict was rendered the judge "turned to will shortly begin a study to determine some unfinished business" and, in a whether the freedom of Counsel effec- manner bristling with hate and sadistic tively to represent the Foley Square satisfaction, found all the defense law- defendants has been preserved, it was yers guilty of criminal contempt and announced yesterday bv the New sentenced them to severe prison sen- York City chapter of the National
January 1949).
Immediately after the infamous ver-
The duty of a Court is to