From the Chair
Alas,
it is all too common to witness elected officials adhering mindlessly
to the popular orthodoxy of the day. Rare—and heroic—is the public leader
who, following conscience and principle, actually leads in a direction
contrary to prevailing winds. One of those rare leaders is the person
we will honor with the Section’s prestigious Thurgood Marshall Award
at the 2002 ABA Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C., this coming August:
former California Congressman Don Edwards.
Congressman Edwards, a Stanford law graduate,
was elected to Congress in l962. The decade preceding his election saw
the height of "McCarthyism." Under the banner of rooting out
Communism, federal and state employees lost their jobs, Hollywood screenwriters
and others were blacklisted, law-abiding citizens had their phones tapped,
their mail opened, and their meetings infiltrated. Fear of being labeled
"soft on Communism" was rampant. In the U.S. Senate, Joe McCarthy
led the campaign to identify Communist sympathizers. In the U.S. House
of Representatives, similar efforts were undertaken by the House Un-American
Activities Committee (HUAC).
Although McCarthy had departed, HUAC was
still in full swing when Edwards arrived in Congress. He was appalled
that vestiges of McCarthyism remained within HUAC and he determined
to speak out in favor of its abolition, notwithstanding any threat such
a stance would have to his own personal career. He was one of only twenty
congressmen who voted to abolish HUAC during his first year in Congress.
As a result of his persistent efforts, HUAC was abolished several years
later.
Edwards served in the FBI before coming
to Congress, as well as in Naval Intelligence during the Second World
War, but he was deeply concerned about the FBI’s Cointelpro program.
Under Cointelpro, the Bureau conducted large-scale, ongoing undercover
investigations of law-abiding citizens simply because it did not approve
of their views. Edwards used his position on the House Judiciary Committee
to investigate and expose Cointelpro’s surveillance operations, which
ultimately resulted in the closing of all the Bureau’s domestic security
files in which criminal conduct was not at issue. His efforts also helped
set the precedent that the FBI was subject to congressional oversight.
As it turned out, Edwards’s career did
not suffer from his brave stands against HUAC and FBI abuses. Instead,
he was reelected time and again, ultimately serving in the U.S. House
of Representatives for thirty-two years, twenty-three as chair of the
House Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Civil Liberties and Civil Rights.
During this time, he continued to swim against the tide of popular opinion
when justice and fairness so required, successfully insisting against
his party’s opposition, for example, that President Nixon be afforded
due process, including legal counsel, in his impeachment trial.
In 1989, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that
a Texas statute making it a crime to burn an American flag was an unconstitutional
limitation on free speech. There was an immediate outpouring of passion
and calls to amend the Constitution but Edwards managed the defeat of
the amendment. He also insisted on adherence to the Constitution throughout
the l980s when Congress took up crime bill after crime bill as legislators
discovered that being perceived as "tough on crime" was popular
with the electorate. He insisted, for example, that the accused in all
cases be provided counsel. He also opposed mandatory minimum sentencing
laws and the growing use of the death penalty.
This issue of Human Rights includes
articles about mandatory minimum sentences, "three strikes and
you’re out" laws, and increased federalization of crimes. As the
articles point out, these measures have resulted in excessive costs
in taxpayer dollars and, more importantly, in lost lives that could
otherwise be productive. They also raise serious questions about the
fairness of our justice system.
These so-called tough-on-crime measures
that are so politically appealing cry out for objective scrutiny. So,
too, do other current law enforcement activities that may satisfy prevailing
political winds but fail to reflect traditional standards of justice.
These include current federal government decisions to detain indefinitely
in American jails selected noncitizens (including resident aliens) who
are of Middle Eastern origin without charges being promptly lodged,
and plans to try accused terrorists before military tribunals without
any right of review by an entity independent of the executive branch.
Emotions are running high in the aftermath
of September 11, and understandably so, but as I noted in a previous
"From the Chair" column discussing the internment of Japanese
Americans during World War II, these are precisely the times when Don
Edwards’s kind of leadership is most urgently needed.
I hope you will join the Section of Individual
Rights and Responsibilities in honoring Don Edwards on August 10, 2002.
