Subversive Activities Bills, 1949, Submitted to the Committee on the.
Zechariah Chafee Jr.'s Defiance of Communist Witch Hunting: A Manuscript Against the Subversive Activities Bills [Manuscript]. Chafee, Zechariah, Jr. [1885-1957]. Subversive Activities Bills, 1949: Statement by Z. Chafee, Jr. Submitted to the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate [cover title]. [Cambridge: Harvard Law School, June 4, 1949]. 43 ff. Typescript (carbon copy) bound in stiff textured paper covers with metal brads. Some rubbing and a few minor chips and tears, faint spotting to front cover. Moderate toning to interior, brief manuscript corrections in ink to a few leaves. $500. * In 1949 Chafee, Langdell Professor of Law at Harvard and the nation's leading expert on the First Amendment, submitted this statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which was considering a two bills that were intended to revive the provisions of the Mundt-Nixon Bill. Named for Representatives Karl Mundt and Richard Nixon and initially known as the Subversive Activities Control Act, this House bill required all members of the Communist Party of the United States to register with the attorney general. Massive protests were held in Wahington, DC against the bill, which passed the House overwhelmingly; the Senate held committee hearings on the bill but failed to take a vote. In his statement, addressed to Committee Member James Eastland, Chafee famously challenges the "Clear and Present Danger" doctrine here, noting that "it is not enough that Communists are pestiferous people... the question is whether they are within a million miles of [taking over]." A vital primary source documenting the legal resistance to the McCarran Act era. Ultimately, neither bill passed the Senate. In 1950 many of their provisionswere included in what was known as the McCarran Internal Security Act, which passed both houses of Congress in 1950.
Price: $500.00
Book number 86062