◆ SpookStack

a The power to investigate, however, is merely an adjunttbf the power to legislate. “Clggrly,” as the Chief Justice put it, “an investigation 1s subject to the command that the Congrese shall make no law abridging freedom of speech or press or assambly. While it is true that there is no atatute to ‘be reviewed, and that an investigation is not a law, nevertheless an investigation is part of lawmaking .. . Abuses of the investigative process may imperceptibly lead to abridgment of protected freedoms.” The Un-American Activities Committee has operated as a kind of roving satrapy, intruding fous to any consideration of privacy and unfet- tered by any limitation in the House Resolution which created it. Its jurisdiction is so vague, the Court concluded, that witnesses talled before it have no means of determining whether the ques- tions put to them have relevancy to any legitimate congressional purpose. “Prosecution for contempt of Congress,” Justice Frankfurter said in a con- eurring opinion, “presupposes an adequate oppor- tumity for the defendant to have awareness of the pertinency of the information that he has denied to Congress.” There was plainly no such opportunity in the hearing given to, Mr. Watkins. The court decision in no way strips Congress of its power to investigate. “The legislature js free to detetmine the kinds of data that should he collected,* the Chief Justice pointed out. “It is only those investigations that are conducted by use of compulsory process that give rise to a “need to protect the rights of individuals against {Illegal encroachment. That protection can he teadity achieved through procedures which pre- vent the separation of power from responsibility and which provide the constitutional requisites of fairness for witnesses.” The decision is a land- Warkimsthe long struggle to keep Americans free from oppressive and arbitrary governmental power