YATES v. UNITED STATES 354 U.S. 298 (1957)

Following dennis v. united states (1951), Smith Act conspiracy prosecutions were brought against all second-rank United States Communist party officials, and convictions were secured in every case brought to trial between 1951 and 1956. In June 1957, however, the Supreme Court, in Yates, reversed the convictions of fourteen West Coast party leaders charged with Smith Act violations. The Court, speaking through Justice john marshall harlan, declared that the Dennis decision had been misunderstood. The Smith Act did not outlaw advocacy of the abstract doctrine of violent overthrow, because such advocacy was too remote from concrete action to be regarded as the kind of indoctrination preparatory to action condemned in Dennis. The essential distinction, Harlan argued, was that those to whom the advocacy was addressed had to be urged to do something, now or in the future, rather than merely believe in something. Without formally repudiating the "sliding scale" reformulation of clear and present danger set forth in the Dennis opinion, the Court erected a stern new standard for evaluating convictions under the Smith Act, making conviction under the measure difficult. As to indictments for involvement in organizing the Communist party in the United States, the Court also took a narrow view. Organizing, Harlan maintained, was only the original act of creating such a group, not any continuing process of proselytizing and recruiting. Since the indictments had been made some years following the postwar organizing of their party, the federal three-year statute of limitations had run out. The Court cleared five of the defendants, remanding the case of nine others for retrial. The ruling brought an abrupt end to the main body of Smith Act prosecutions then under way.

Paul L. Murphy
(1986)