Albertson v. Subversive Activities Control Board

Petitioner
William Albertson
Respondent
Subversive Activities Control Board
Petitioner's Claim
That the requirement of the Internal Security Act of 1950 (the McCarran Act)that members of the Communist Party register with the attorney general violates the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.
Chief Lawyer for Petitioner
Kevin T. Maroney
Chief Lawyer for Respondent
John J. Abt
Justices for the Court
Hugo Lafayette Black, William J. Brennan, Jr. (writing for the Court), Tom C.Clark, William O. Douglas, Abe Fortas, John Marshall Harlan II, Potter Stewart, Earl Warren
Justices Dissenting
None (Byron R. White did not participate)
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
15 November 1965
Decision
This registration requirement of the McCarran Act was struck down as an infringement on a citizens Fifth Amendment rights.
Significance
Albertson marked the beginning of the end of the Subversive ActivitiesControl Board. A remnant of the McCarthy era, it was eventually allowed to lapse in 1973 for lack of congressional appropriation.
In 1950, during the era of the Red Scare, the heyday of Senator Joseph McCarthy and of the House Un-American Activities Committee, Congress passed the Internal Security Act, also known as the McCarran Act. The statute required communist organizations to register with the attorney general, with the registration process to be managed by the Subversive Activities Control Board (SACB).Registered groups were also required to provide a list of their members, whowere in turn required to register individually. Members of registered organizations were denied passports, as well as the opportunity to work in defense plants. Each day that an individual failed to register could cost as much as $1,000 or five years in prison, or both.
Not surprisingly, most organizations, including the Communist Party of the United States of America, declined to register. The attorney general then petitioned the SACB for an order requiring party member William Albertson and others to register. They, in turn, sought review of the order from the Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia Circuit, which affirmed the order. Albertson and others then applied directly to the U.S. Supreme Court for a final review of the legitimacy of the registration requirement, claiming among other things, that it violated the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.
Registration Requirement Struck Down
Writing for a unanimous Court, Justice Brennan argued that while the registration requirement itself might not amount to mandatory self-incrimination, being listed as a member of a subversive organization might be used as the basisfor some future criminal prosecution. In the superheated atmosphere of paranoia that gave rise to the SACB and which was furthered by it, mere association with such an organization as the Communist Party was damning in and of itself. If nothing else, it cast suspicion over the registered person, who was required to supply information such as date and place of birth, which could provide leads for investigators trying to collect evidence for a criminal action. The immunity clause attached to the McCarran Act, which purportedly protected against prosecution based on the act of registering was, therefore, no protection:

The judgment as to whether a disclosure would be "incriminatory" has never been made dependent on an assessment of the information possessed by the Government at the time of interrogation; the protection of theprivilege [against self-incrimination] would be seriously impaired if the right to invoke it was dependent on such an assessment, with all its uncertainties. The threat to the privilege is no less present where it is proposed thatthis assessment be made in order to remedy a shortcoming in the grant of immunity. The representation that the information demanded is of no utility is belied by the fact that the failure to make the disclosure is so severely sanctioned . . .

Although the Court had upheld the registration requirement per se in Communist Party of the United States v. Subversive Activities Control Board (1961), it postponed a decision on the sanctions attached to the requirement until they were at issue. After Albertson did away with registration under the McCarran Act, subsequent cases, such as United States v. Robel(1967), which threw out the ban on defense department employment, succeeded in gutting the act. In 1973, it was allowed to expire altogether for lack of appropriation.
Related Cases

• Communist Party of the United States v. Subversive Activities ControlBoard, 367 U.S. 1 (1961).
  
• United States v. Robel, 389 U.S. 258 (1967).

Senator Joseph McCarthy
Senator Joseph McCarthy became notorious for leading a witch hunt in the formof trials of alleged Communists in the 1950s. After practicing law in Wisconsin and serving in the Marine Corp during World War II, McCarthy was electedto the Senate as a Republican in 1946. McCarthy served his first three yearsquietly, until his explosive 1950 speech where he claimed that 205 Communistshad infiltrated the State Department. In response, a Senate committee ordered McCarthy to provide evidence to support his allegations. Although McCarthyfailed to produce any evidence, he became a vocal leader of the anti-Communist movement and his message resonated with citizens who feared the spread of Communism.
Senator McCarthy chaired the Senate's Government Committee on Operations andheaded its subcommittee on investigations beginning in 1953. McCarthy used his position to continue his attack on Communism and accused many people of being Communists or Communist sympathizers through the Committee's trials. Whenthe Democrats took control of the Senate in 1954, Senator John L. McClellan replaced McCarthy as chair of the investigating committee. Senator McClellan criticized McCarthy's tactics and pushed to have him censured, which occurredin 1955. McCarthy's censure led to the decline of his political influence. McCarthy died in 1957.
Sources
West's Encyclopedia of American Law. Minneapolis, MN: West Publishing,1998.