Leonard Boudin discusses various cases he's tried

Studs Terkel You know these days professional schools are crowded, hard to get in; medical school, law school, particularly. And you always wonder why are young people attending law school. To do what? To practice law in what manner? To make a buck or two, a big one with a big firm or perhaps to represent those up against it. As a matter of fact seated in the studio aside from some students, members of the class of the University Chicago Law School is someone who's been their guest for the past several days. The class invited him. Leonard Boudain who is one of the most distinguished of all civil libertarians and certainly civil liberties lawyers around and about. In his own life and his clients as part of American history, very much part of it. And I was thinking, Leonard Boudin you're someone I've wanted to meet for a long time and finally have. The delight.

Leonard Boudin I'm here. I'm here and at your mercy.

Studs Terkel Yes sir. I was thinking. Why did you become a lawyer?

Leonard Boudin I became a lawyer because my teachers in City College where I went, thought I would not become a good teacher of, of creative writing, although I thought I was a good writer. And they said do something else. My father was a lawyer, real estate lawyer. My uncle was a great constitutional and labor lawyer. And it seemed as if the that was the only thing to do. I was used to it.

Studs Terkel And so you were a law student in the early thirties, graduated from a law school.

Leonard Boudin Right.

Studs Terkel And I was thinking. Now you, you came from a family of lawyers, distinguished, pretty well set up. How come you didn't go into corporate law and make a pretty good bundle or two?

Leonard Boudin Well it was my uncle's fault. He was a labor lawyer. He represented trade unions. The the great trade unions of the 1930s, the furriers' union and that whole group of wonderful unions. And while he knew corporate law and business law, his interest was only in labor law and constitutional law. So I never became a regular lawyer. I never learned all the things that lawyers had to do in order to make money. And when I left my uncle after about 10 years and formed my own firm, they gave me a couple of trade union clients to take, unlike the normal pract-, I didn't steal the clients. They gave them to me and those clients turned out to be left wing unions that the government moved against immediately. So instead of being trade union clients, they turned out to be political clients.

Studs Terkel That's fine. We're talking about McCarthy days.

Leonard Boudin McCarthy period, right. Fifties, 48, [50-52].

Studs Terkel Now you did something. You had defended in almost all cases, people who espouse what would be called very unpopular causes. [unintelligilbe] These were the dissenters. Very unpopular. Yeah why did you take those cases?

Leonard Boudin Well of course they were popular with me. I took them because it's very hard to tell now I don't think I had a philosophy. First, they came to me. I was available and everybody likes to be available. Secondly, they involved interesting constitutional problems. Third they involved basic civil liberties. And all of this was sort of consistent with my general interest in the rights of people. I don't think I had a clear picture. If corporations had come to me maybe I would have been a corporate lawyer.

Studs Terkel Mhmm.

Leonard Boudin I -it's unfortunate these clients came to me.

Studs Terkel Yeah, I doubt, I doubt that.

Leonard Boudin I knew you were going to say that

Studs Terkel You were inclined a certain way obviously. And this goes back to I'm sure of certain beliefs you've held, ideas about civil liberties something called the First Amendment, I suppose.

Leonard Boudin That's right. First Amendment is the first.

Studs Terkel Well, now we come to some of the cases. Let's begin with some.

Leonard Boudin Alright.

Studs Terkel Now Rockwell Kent was a distinguished American artist. Woodcuts. I mean, great. He also was a curmudgeon and very much of a. What'd we call him, a dissenter? A nonconformist. Very much so.

Leonard Boudin Definitely.

Studs Terkel I mean damnably so.

Leonard Boudin He once gave me a book by a man named George Abbey called, "The Non-conformist". That was his style.

Studs Terkel Now, what. How did that ca-. What was the case?

Leonard Boudin He came to me through the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee at which I was general counsel because he had been denied a passport on the ground of his political views. The same time, Doctor Walter Braille, a psychiatrist, came to me because he had been denied a right to attend a psychoanalytic conference in Ankara. And in each case, I eventually sued the State Department. On the ground that the State Department had no right to put political conditions to the right to travel. A few months before that I had represented Otto Nathan the executor of the estate of Albert Einstein, who-

Studs Terkel A close friend of Einstein?

Leonard Boudin A close friend of Einstein and of mine, even today. And so we took the Rockwell Kent case and the Walter Brailee cases to the Supreme Court where we argued the constitutional right to travel despite political qualifil, qualifications or dis-qualifications. And at that time you know, Mrs. Shipley was the director of the Passport Office and even Dean Acheson wrote an article, who was quoted in an article called, "Mrs. Shipley says No." That when he asked her to give passports, he was the secretary of state, she said absolutely not.

Studs Terkel Now she was the Czarina.

Leonard Boudin She was a Czarina and she liked me very much. I liked her, too, personally but she was a terrible woman and she was standing there denying passports for political reasons. And we finally licked her and licked the State Department by a vote of five to four in the Supreme Court.

Studs Terkel Is this the Warren

Leonard Boudin Is the Warren court. I, when I finished my oral argument in the Supreme Court, Frankfurter, who never liked me for some reason, I can't see any reason why he shouldn't have. Either refused to go to a party to celebrate the case. I was convinced I had lost and turned out I had won, five to four. When that decision came down, I would say a 100,000 Americans then began to travel who were afraid even to apply for a passport. And that was the one case in my entire life and career that I feel closest to, more than anything else, the right to travel.

Studs Terkel That ca- the right to travel [unintelligible]. That case really had repercussions for about 100,000 Americans who were afraid to apply because they may have signed petitions or did something. Precisely.

Leonard Boudin Precisely.

Studs Terkel We're talking about the 50s?

Leonard Boudin We're talking about the late 40s and the early

Studs Terkel The beginning of a Cold War becoming more frigid and Joe McCarthy just becoming coming, coming into flower.

Leonard Boudin Precisely.

Studs Terkel And but you won that case, at that time.

Leonard Boudin That's right. And the court was going in a different direction. In almost every other case but we won it here and I've often wondered whether it was that Frankfurter who was on our side for the first time, somehow or other felt that the idea of American citizenship and the value of travel appealed to him.

Studs Terkel He was the fifth vote.

Leonard Boudin He was the fifth vote. I lost him in almost every other case.

Studs Terkel No, the other two, obviously Black and Douglas.

Leonard Boudin Of course.

Studs Terkel In addition to

Leonard Boudin Warren and Brennan.

Studs Terkel Warren and. Oh, Brennan was there.

Leonard Boudin Brennan was there. I lost Clark. Clark the father of

Studs Terkel This is interesting. Ramsey Clark's father. We have Ramsey Clark who would be your colleague in so

Leonard Boudin In many things

Studs Terkel His father was Tom Clark who voted against you.

Leonard Boudin No, Ramsey and I are good friends even though he ordered the prosecution of my client, Benjamin Spock.

Studs Terkel Well perhaps we come to that. By the way, that the tremendous transformation. Or not transformation but change. Growth of Ramsey Clark is one of the remarkable stories of our day, I

Leonard Boudin Agreed. I think he's one of the great citizens of the country today. He's always available for any important cause.

Studs Terkel To the young students here and [graduates of] University of Chicago Law School.

Leonard Boudin Hey, that proves the point what a great law school

Studs Terkel About, about what? How many years behind me? About 10 years behind me. Would you believe it?

Leonard Boudin Yeah.

Studs Terkel There's one who came through. U of C Law School. He's a graduate and the so is Posner and so is Estabrook. I've

Leonard Boudin I've heard those.

Studs Terkel And so is Scalia.

Leonard Boudin I've heard that. I've met him.

Studs Terkel And so is. Who'd I forget? Bork. These are four Reagan appointees to federal

Leonard Boudin Yup. They're the threats. They're the threats to American civil liberties today.

Studs Terkel They're what?

Leonard Boudin They are the threats to America

Studs Terkel How? How? Why so?

Leonard Boudin Well I think there's a great danger in the light of. I've heard Scalia talk and I of course read opinions that one of them probably Bork. No maybe not. Maybe he is too scowl. He, one of them may turn out to be on the Supreme Court. If Reagan appoints anybody he will take one of them and then we will will we will be

Studs Terkel [unintelligible] something to be unwished. Yeah.

Leonard Boudin Yes.

Studs Terkel Boy, but that may be. So, we're talking about appointee's this is over and beyond this administration these four years something that is forever and many of these are young. Right?

Leonard Boudin The president, this president, probably appoints more younger people to the judiciary than any other president in American history. And I think he's determined to fashion the court permanently not just in his period of time. Permanently in his image.

Studs Terkel So no matter then as you see it as a lawyer, we'll come to the cases you talked about.

Leonard Boudin Sure.

Studs Terkel Right you mentioned Spock, in a moment. Then over and beyond assuming there's a different administration of different orientation, whereas, the federal judiciary will be Reaganesque.

Leonard Boudin It will be-

Studs Terkel Time, long time to come

Leonard Boudin For 40 years to come. It will be Reaganesque. That's some heritage for a president to leave.

Studs Terkel Boy oh boy.

Leonard Boudin We have to worry.

Studs Terkel What happens then to [unintelligible] you. Rockwell Kent was the case when you won. You mentioned Dr. Spock. Now we come to the 60's,

Leonard Boudin Well, the, the. All of these people to go back to your earlier question, all of these people became friends after they became clients. And I love them all. I regarded all of them as the great citizens of the country and of the world. And Dr. Spock, of course, is as sho-, I'm having breakfast with him tomorrow morning, really deserves a halo. He is so remarkable not only for what he's done for children but his, his for example in the Spock case when he was indicted for conspiracy.

Studs Terkel When wa- the case was now what?

Leonard Boudin It was a criminal prosecution brought on the last day of 1967 charging Dr. Spock and four other people with conspiring to persuade young men not to carry their draft cards. And

Studs Terkel This is during the Vietnam War?

Leonard Boudin During the Vietnam War, of course and many of these co-conspirators such as Spock never knew one another or had met them on a platform in passing and on President Johnson's orders I believe, this prosecution was brought by Ramsey Clark. And I defended Dr. Spock.

Studs Terkel So Ramsey Clark was the, was the prosecutor.

Leonard Boudin That's right. I defended Dr. Spock and James St. Clair who ultimately represented the President Nixon. Defended, another represented another defendant.

Studs Terkel Pardon me just a parenthetical comment. There's an irony here that's marvelous, the switches that occurred. James St. Clair who was Nixon's attorney during the Watergate hearings was defending one of the co-clients, of yours.

Leonard Boudin Exactly.

Studs Terkel And Ramsey Clark

Leonard Boudin was

Studs Terkel Later became the advocate. His devlop- was the prosecutor.

Leonard Boudin [unintelligible]

Studs Terkel Along with Spock, who were the other clients?

Leonard Boudin Reverend William Sloane Coffin was the most famous of the group and he was represented by James St. Clair.

Studs Terkel Was Berrigan part of that?

Leonard Boudin No. Berrigan was not part of that. Mitchell Goodman was another, a lovely young man was brought in as a co-conspirator. I can't reme-Michael Ferber. And finally one of the heads of the Institute of Policy Studies, Marcus Raskin.

Studs Terkel Marcus. So this was a conspiracy even though they had never met, never known each

Leonard Boudin Hardly knew each other.

Studs Terkel about each other. That keep young draft age and for character [unintelligible]-what happens?

Leonard Boudin Well four of them were convicted including Dr. Spock and we won in the Court of Appeals. We won with Spock on the ground that there was no evidence to justify the indictment and the conviction and therefore there was an outright direction of acquittal by the Court of Appeals. The other defendants won on another theory which would have permitted a new trial. Namely the judge had by his instructions in a sense coerced the jury. But the government decided, must have been Ramsey, not to, have, try them again. So that was Dr. Spock's one major criminal prosecution and he was an extraordinary man. At one point in the examination that I had of him, he said something which would have tended to separate himself by accident from the other defendants and that night we met with one of the counsel and I said, "How do you like Dr. Spock's testimony?" He said, "Well it seemed as if he was distancing himself from the other defendants." Spock was there listening. The next day, we agreed I would ask him a question. That question helped, helped to inculpate him but he did it because he didn't want to show himself as being more protected. [hand hitting table] That is how extraordinary he is and was.

Studs Terkel Yeah. We're talking Leonard Bourdain, civil liberties lawyer. To put it mildly, an excellent one with a long, great track record of defending those who espouse, what at the time would be unpopular cause that later on may become that which is accepted order of the day. That thing I just raised, that matter of unpopular at the time yet years later may be acceptable of course. Thoughts on that after we hear this. [pause] So resuming with Leonard Boudin, lawyer who is a guest by the way of the University of Chicago Law School class. Isn't that right? How do you find the young law students today, generally?

Leonard Boudin I like law students. I've taught at Stanford recently and at Harvard earlier and Yale and I find them removing themselves from the inertness that existed a few years ago and very interested in social causes. [hand hitting table] Today I was able to have a meeting with about 12 young law students and I have talked before half a dozen groups in the last couple of days. I find them they're all asking, "What are the social issues [of] today in which law students can be of value?" Very different from 15, 20 years ago.

Studs Terkel You find this. This is interesting. We hear more and more talk. You know the word yuppies a much overused word. It does represent about five percent of the young. But nonetheless the one to whom more the com-the commercials are aimed at. And we hear more and more talk of apathy of the young. Of no sense of past or history of young out to make it big in the corporate world. Did you find?

Leonard Boudin I don't find-well, I admit that most of the people when they leave law schools will work for corporate law firms, who will pay them $60,000 dollars a year for the first year. [hand hitting table] We will pay $22,000 dollars a year.[hand hitting table] When we have it. But I find that the law students who are applying for jobs to my firm are increasing in number each year in the last five years. They come from having been law clerks for judges, kind we prefer actually in our office. And they all want to do civil liberties work of the kind that we do. So I am very impressed. And regardless of the particular law school whether it's Stanford, which is considered conservative. Or University of Chicago or Harvard or Yale where I just spent a week, they are interested in problems and I see the future of the world with the law students. Medical students, I don't know, but I think it's true of medical also today.

Studs Terkel Of course. And also with the young women in law class, the number.

Leonard Boudin I had not meant to exclude women when I described. Oh you mean the

Studs Terkel No. I meant [unintelligible] phenomenon.

Leonard Boudin Oh that's right.

Studs Terkel As the, as the number of women in the law classes.

Leonard Boudin In my class at Harvard where I taught in many years ago there were eight women in a class of 158 and they were silent until Dr. Spock was a guest speaker and then they moved in to attack him.

Studs Terkel I was the U of C Law School, '31 to '34. There was about 200 something like two women and both of them were married to fellow students. That's it. Today I suppose U of C Law School has how many in the class?

Unidentified woman A third.

Studs Terkel Thirty-three percent is not bad. So you find something going on.

Leonard Boudin There is something going

Studs Terkel on Something

Leonard Boudin And very impressed.

Studs Terkel So we're gonna continue with what we're talking about. It was Spock and some of the cases because there are. Julian Bond. Julian Bond of Georgia was one of your clients.

Leonard Boudin He

Studs Terkel What was the what was the trouble?

Leonard Boudin He was a black legislator who had been a member of SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. And he made a statement of support for the Vietnam War whereupon the-

Studs Terkel Support against-

Leonard Boudin against

Studs Terkel the

Leonard Boudin Quite right. Against the war whereupon the Georgia legislature to which he had been elected by the people refused to admit him as a member, refused to let him take an oath of office. And then he was reelected or elected again and they again refused. And I was asked by him to represent him in the Supreme Court to declare that what Georgia had done was unconstitutional in violation of his First Amendment rights. And the court unanimously held that his rights were protected by the First Amendment and the Georgia could not exclude him and he is today I think still in the state legislature.

Studs Terkel What happens to you, by the way. You're the lawyer [representing?] in these unpopular causes. Does it effect you in any way -- your livelihood, your reputation, in respectable circles?

Leonard Boudin I don't th-well I think that some groups in the government like the House on Unamerican Activities Committee and the Internal Security Subcommittee and perhaps particular federal prosecutors have a conception of me which is not very favorable. On the other hand I have found that my relationship with judges from the first day I began to practice law in 1936 has been very good and that the judges have not felt any bias against me. Now part of that is due to the fact that I've always written legal article for The Law Reviews and I've always taught in law schools so that I'm put in a kind of a scholarly equation. But my relationship with judges is very good. I remember once when I was representing the Cuban government in the early days the government was about to prosecute me criminally for refusing to register as a foreign agent. My view was that we didn't have to register. But in papers that were ultimately discovered, we saw they were really thinking of indicting me. But we brought a civil action preempting the area and while we lost in the Supreme Court, A - we were never indicted. We registered and then Congress passed a law exempting lawyers from registering because of corporate lawyers on Wall Street didn't want to register. They didn't help us in the case but they weren't willing to register.

Studs Terkel That would set a bad precedent.

Leonard Boudin Exactly. But I think I've had a almost as good a relationship with government lawyers and judges with a few exceptions of the wild ones.

Studs Terkel Because you are considered, as you are a scholar, you prepare things and you also write for the Law Review. So you have a rep-.

Leonard Boudin I've been lucky than most.

Studs Terkel I was gonna say- since four students, law students UC are here, seated in the studio. How do you, if I ask you a simplistic sort of question, prepare for the case? Just elementary matters like say the case of right to travel. Do you look for precedent? You look through books? Old law, law, old statutes or what? How how do you prepare?

Leonard Boudin Oddly enough with respect to the right to travel, I owed a great deal of my work to reading two student articles. Student articles. One in the Stanford Law Review and one in the Yale Law Journal. And those student articles did all the work that lawyers would ordinarily do. So that I've always felt a great debt to them. And from that, I began building my own research into, to what extent does Congress try to interfere with the right to travel. To what extent the president and then I moved of course to the conceptual things like Zachariah Chafee's view on the importance of travel for educational reasons. And I try to put it in a constitutional framework. I overprepare unfortunately. I think we go too far. But I, I do feel in many cases, a debt to the students who worked on the Law Reviews.

Studs Terkel Why do you say your overprepare? You go too far. Is there such a thing as going too far?

Leonard Boudin Only in terms of time.

Studs Terkel Oh work! [unintelligible] but you do.

Leonard Boudin I do. I think particularly in the area of the right to travel which I fixed on so early in my life

Studs Terkel [unintelligible] Right to travel readings. I imagine readings of non-law works are important, too, aren't

Leonard Boudin they? Precisely.

Studs Terkel To give you a historical perspective.

Leonard Boudin Precisely. Oddly enough in the, in the travel cases, I was reading something written by someone whom I knew Felix Frankfurter admired a great deal. I put that reference in a footnote in order to affect

Studs Terkel And of course, he was on the

Leonard Boudin He was on the bench. And it may have. It was

Studs Terkel And I understand his ego was not little.

Leonard Boudin Oh it was a great ego! And when I sometimes argue before him, he didn't like me. I don't know why. As I said before, he would swivel his chair around and turn his back to me. 'Mazing!

Studs Terkel There was his name. You cited his name. That's pretty good.

Leonard Boudin Yeah. I couldn't do that I was standing up. I didn't have a swivel chair.

Studs Terkel So then, I imagine calling on precedent perspective, the conspiracy case. Now here of course is a long history going back, this is the hundredth anniversary of the Haymarket.

Leonard Boudin Of course.

Studs Terkel Tragedy.

Leonard Boudin Of course.

Studs Terkel And they were of course conspira-we know they weren't there. The guys who were hanged.

Leonard Boudin Correct.

Studs Terkel They weren't even there when the bomb was thrown. Yet four were hanged because the conspiracy to incite was added

Leonard Boudin [unintelligible] Correct.

Studs Terkel They have spoken and their, their words you could be a later date

Leonard Boudin And actually their words had nothing to do with a bomb that was exploded there. Their words were general attacks on society and yet those general attacks were regarded as a conspiracy.

Studs Terkel And so when you prepare for the Spock case, say.

Leonard Boudin Well when I do that I will look into all the conspiracy cases, particularly political conspiracy cases and try to distinguish them.

Studs Terkel You go back then. You go back in history?

Leonard Boudin Go back as far back as the, as the English history. [hand hitting table] I don't stop with 1789. And oddly enough in the Spock case where the Court of Appeals knocked out one of my arguments, they relied upon a case that my [hand hitting table]uncle had lost in 1918.

Studs Terkel Your uncle Louie Boudin.

Leonard Boudin My uncle Louie Boudin, involving a conspiracy similar to that of Spock.

Studs Terkel I'll

Leonard Boudin We won of ultimately. But Judge [Aldridge?] took particular pleasure because he knew who my uncle was inciting that case against me.

Studs Terkel So that was during World War

Leonard Boudin That's right. And what I do normally is I try, which most lawyers don't do I suspect, to try to read the original briefs in these old cases and particularly when I teach in law schools where the, the Xeroxing facilities are free. I try to get the old brief of the 1800's and get them from the archives and have them Xerox and then I use that material in historical cases.

Studs Terkel Yeah. So history plays

Leonard Boudin History is a very large part in that.

Studs Terkel And now when Gene Debs was sent to prison during World War I for protesting the war. [unintelligible] certain speech he made in Canton Ohio.

Leonard Boudin Right

Studs Terkel [unintelligible] Was that conspiracy?

Leonard Boudin That was. No I think that was a single charge of obstructing the draft.

Studs Terkel Ah hah

Leonard Boudin But the basic First Amendment problems were the same as those we had with Spock.

Studs Terkel So we've come to the First Amendment. [unintelligible] a little about the First Amendment. You find that eroding today in some quarters?

Leonard Boudin Yes, I find in the case I lost in the Supreme Court for example, Regan against Wald which involved-

Studs Terkel How long

Leonard Boudin Right to travel to Cuba. Three years ago.

Studs Terkel Now George Wald

Leonard Boudin No. It's George Wald's wife, Ruth Hubbard, a doctor.

Studs Terkel And a wife of the Nobel Laureate.

Leonard Boudin Correct. We brought that lawsuit to declare illegal unconstitutional the president's restriction on, or Treasury's restriction on the use of money to go [hand hitting table] to Cuba. The government argued that they were interested in preventing Cuba from having money which would build up a tourist industry which would eventually result in revolution in Latin America. Completely mythical argument. The real argument of the government, the real reason was, they didn't want Americans to know Cubans. It's very hard to hate people you know. It's easy to hate them if your [unintelligible] and read about 'em in the newspaper. And I won before the Court of Appeals in the First Circuit and lost in the Supreme Court by a vote of 5 to 4.

Studs Terkel This is the current court?

Leonard Boudin Current court.

Studs Terkel Five to four?

Leonard Boudin Terrible opinion written by Justice Rehnquist.

Studs Terkel Rehnquist.

Leonard Boudin Terrible opinion.

Studs Terkel Now the four this would be Brennan and, and Marshall and who were the-

Leonard Boudin Blackman. Blackman wrote the dissenting opinion. And oddly enough, I lost Justice Stevens and I got Justice Powell.

Studs Terkel Powell.

Leonard Boudin Strange.

Studs Terkel Now this is interesting. Now, we have several people who would be Twilight Zone [unintelligible]

Leonard Boudin Exactly.

Studs Terkel Blackman is an interesting figure, isn't

Leonard Boudin One of the great justices today.

Studs Terkel Really?

Leonard Boudin I, I think he is absolutely remarkable. The concern he has for basic human values is extraordinary and it's reflected increasingly in his decisions.

Studs Terkel Really? So it isn't Brennan and Marshall alone?

Leonard Boudin Blackman is a very important figure. And it may very well be that the court was almost going our way because the opinion written by Blackman is so long and detailed without necessary reference to the majority opinion that I think that the court at one point would have voted for me and he was writing the opinion.

Studs Terkel You know, I think one of the ironies is you lost five to four which means that Whizzer White, who's a Kennedy appointee voted against you, as is very often against these matters. So here we have we always think of Nixon appoint as a Reagan. There was a Kennedy appointee. White, who very often votes the other way.

Leonard Boudin And of course following your line of thinking there were two great appointees of President Eisenhower. Brennan and, and Warren.

Studs Terkel So there it is. So there's no rule of thumb here, is

Leonard Boudin But there is one rule of thumb. Yes.

Studs Terkel Yes.

Leonard Boudin This, this president is not making any mistakes. This president is watching every appointee under consideration. And there will be no possibility of a liberal Supreme Court justice.

Studs Terkel Who, who would be your- are his legal advisers in matters of this sort? Who would he call upon? What

Leonard Boudin Attorney General Meese I think-

Studs Terkel Meese?

Leonard Boudin would be a key adviser. Meese, I think, will not get on the Supreme Court. I think even though he was cleared by Jake Stein, special prosecutor, of having committed a criminal act [hand hitting table], I think he's been hurt too much to be on the Supreme Court. On the other hand, I don't know. The Senate and the American people can swallow a lot sometimes [hand hitting table]. But I think Meese will be the principal adviser and then this coterie of people in the White House will play their part.

Studs Terkel My own response is, "Boy!".

Leonard Boudin Boy!

Studs Terkel Boy oh boy! We're talking to Leonard Boudin, civil liberties lawyer primarily, an old friend by the way of Dr. Charlie Clements, who you know was a guest on this program not too long ago on the subject of Nicaragua and what next. And I was thinking let's take a pause for this message. And ask about more of your cases and your reflections, too, after this. [pause]. So resuming with Leonard Boudin and the cases. Now I'm also thinkin' I suppose somewhere someone called you courageous. I know you, you you sort of shy away from that. But you are. You see-, you took cases many lawyers would turn down or have turned down. During the McCarthy days especially. Let's say Paul Robeson. I say Paul Robeson to you. He was your client. Wasn't he?

Leonard Boudin He was.

Studs Terkel What was the case? What was the circumstance?

Leonard Boudin He had been denied a passport by the State Department. And even worse was one of the few Americans if not the only one to be forbidden by the immigration people from leaving the United States for Canada. And he, as we know is one of our great men in America. One of our great singers and I consider it the most tragic case of a man whose inability to perform in the United States because of the Blacklist, the McCarthy period inability to go abroad where he would have been welcomed resulting in about a 10-year hiatus in his singing which I think had an effect on his voice, and psychologically as well. And he came to me ultimately once I was involved in the Kent and the Nathan and the other cases and we started a lawsuit, another lawsuit. He had lost the earlier ones to declare the ban on his travel to be illegal. And I'd argue the thing in the Court of Appeals when Kent against Dulles came down and then immediately Paul Robeson came to my office and we had a press interview and he was holding up his new passport. And within a week or a month he left for Europe where he had a triumphal tour but they had destroyed that great voice.

Studs Terkel Yeah. We hear about nonpersons in other countries and that's true. Now he was declared a nonperson here.

Leonard Boudin Was that.

Studs Terkel Perhaps one of the great voices of our time. One of the great talents of our, of our time. So the deprivation was to the American public as much as to him, of course. But that was your case that-

Leonard Boudin Yes.

Studs Terkel that was.

Leonard Boudin But he won because we had won the basic case of Rockwell Kent. I really regret that I never got to know him as well as I should have. You know you take a case and you're working on it and you don't think the client needs to be around very much particularly if he's a great man.

Studs Terkel You know you mentioned Einstein a moment ago. You know, Einstein himself, by the way, was under attack too. We're talking about Albert Einstein. Yes.

Leonard Boudin Yes. I know that. I'm a very close friend of his closest friend in the United States, Dr. Otto Nathan-

Studs Terkel Who is the executor-

Leonard Boudin executor of the estate.

Studs Terkel Now we come to Otto Nathan.

Leonard Boudin And Otto was denied a passport because he was a member of the teacher's union or he was a member of this group and of that group not the Communist Party even. And they would not give him a passport. And so I brought this lawsuit for him and a district judge, Judge Schweinhaut, now dead, directed the State Department to give him a hearing. And the State Department stalled and stalled and stalled. Refusing to present - have a hearing at which evidence could be shown. Why? Because I didn't think any evidence could justify the denial of a right to travel. When suddenly Einstein died, and Dr. Nathan wanted to go to Switzerland to meet with the great scientists of the world to discuss what should be done with the Einstein Papers which are extremely valuable. And so I made a motion in the district court to hold Secretary of State Dulles in contempt for failing to give us the hearing the judge had ordered. The State Department was demoralized. They really thought a judge would put a State Department official in jail. I knew it never would happen [handclap]. And I asked the judge to do something very unusual. In contempt you normally ask for a fine or you ask that somebody be put in jail. I said, "No. Give us the ultimate relief of a passport. Forget about the hearing." And the judge ordered a passport to be given to Dr. Nathan. The governor immediately went to the Court of Appeals. Was represented then by, by Harold Greene, now a federal judge. And the court of appeals stayed the order. Thereby looked as if the order of Judge Schweinhaut, it looked as if we were losing when it stayed the order but had a condition. Give them a hearing in three days. Give us the evidence that you have against them in five days. Come [handslap]up here back in seven. Had a remarkable Court of Appeals then, Judge Edgington and two other great judges. And within two days the State Department came back in and said, "We gave him a hearing. We just didn't tell him about it. And we giving him a passport. And Judge Edgington wrote an opinion. That was Bazelon and Fay with him. Which said ironically, three days ago they said it would be a national security risk to have him go and they've just given them a passport.

Studs Terkel Yeah. [hand hitting table] By you mention this Court of Appeals, this the one outside Washington?

Leonard Boudin The Washington. The, the

Studs Terkel Well, now it's the Mikva court, isn't it?

Leonard Boudin It's Mik-, a great judge, Judge Mikva.

Studs Terkel Yeah, I was about to say, in the midst of all these appointees.

Leonard Boudin Did you say, "Mitzvah"?

Studs Terkel Yeah, mitzvahh and Mik- and and I'm thinking about the, the how that stands out in these days of, shall we say shadowy appointees'. Here's out of Chicago, of course, former congressman. And that's one of the en-and as you see it enlightened courts.

Leonard Boudin Yes. Now remember they have a number of judges who are increasingly appointed so that the court is a close thing it's a large court that has nine to eleven judges.

Studs Terkel Oh, it does have that many, that's right.

Leonard Boudin And a lot of it depends on which panel you get. You can get a panel overloaded with people on the right.

Studs Terkel Oh! In short. The panel includes three judges?

Leonard Boudin

Studs Terkel You know these days professional schools are crowded, hard to get in; medical school, law school, particularly. And you always wonder why are young people attending law school. To do what? To practice law in what manner? To make a buck or two, a big one with a big firm or perhaps to represent those up against it. As a matter of fact seated in the studio aside from some students, members of the class of the University Chicago Law School is someone who's been their guest for the past several days. The class invited him. Leonard Boudain who is one of the most distinguished of all civil libertarians and certainly civil liberties lawyers around and about. In his own life and his clients as part of American history, very much part of it. And I was thinking, Leonard Boudin you're someone I've wanted to meet for a long time and finally have. The delight. I'm here. I'm here and at your mercy. Yes sir. I was thinking. Why did you become a lawyer? I became a lawyer because my teachers in City College where I went, thought I would not become a good teacher of, of creative writing, although I thought I was a good writer. And they said do something else. My father was a lawyer, real estate lawyer. My uncle was a great constitutional and labor lawyer. And it seemed as if the that was the only thing to do. I was used to it. And so you were a law student in the early thirties, graduated from a law school. Right. And I was thinking. Now you, you came from a family of lawyers, distinguished, pretty well set up. How come you didn't go into corporate law and make a pretty good bundle or two? Well it was my uncle's fault. He was a labor lawyer. He represented trade unions. The the great trade unions of the 1930s, the furriers' union and that whole group of wonderful unions. And while he knew corporate law and business law, his interest was only in labor law and constitutional law. So I never became a regular lawyer. I never learned all the things that lawyers had to do in order to make money. And when I left my uncle after about 10 years and formed my own firm, they gave me a couple of trade union clients to take, unlike the normal pract-, I didn't steal the clients. They gave them to me and those clients turned out to be left wing unions that the government moved against immediately. So instead of being trade union clients, they turned out to be political clients. That's fine. We're talking about McCarthy days. McCarthy period, right. Fifties, 48, [50-52]. Now you did something. You had defended in almost all cases, people who espouse what would be called very unpopular causes. [unintelligilbe] These were the dissenters. Very unpopular. Yeah why did you take those cases? Well of course they were popular with me. I took them because it's very hard to tell now I don't think I had a philosophy. First, they came to me. I was available and everybody likes to be available. Secondly, they involved interesting constitutional problems. Third they involved basic civil liberties. And all of this was sort of consistent with my general interest in the rights of people. I don't think I had a clear picture. If corporations had come to me maybe I would have been a corporate lawyer. Mhmm. I -it's unfortunate these clients came to me. Yeah, I doubt, I doubt that. I knew you were going to say that You were inclined a certain way obviously. And this goes back to I'm sure of certain beliefs you've held, ideas about civil liberties something called the First Amendment, I suppose. That's right. First Amendment is the first. Well, now we come to some of the cases. Let's begin with some. Alright. Now Rockwell Kent was a distinguished American artist. Woodcuts. I mean, great. He also was a curmudgeon and very much of a. What'd we call him, a dissenter? A nonconformist. Very much so. Definitely. I mean damnably so. He once gave me a book by a man named George Abbey called, "The Non-conformist". That was his style. Now, what. How did that ca-. What was the case? He came to me through the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee at which I was general counsel because he had been denied a passport on the ground of his political views. The same time, Doctor Walter Braille, a psychiatrist, came to me because he had been denied a right to attend a psychoanalytic conference in Ankara. And in each case, I eventually sued the State Department. On the ground that the State Department had no right to put political conditions to the right to travel. A few months before that I had represented Otto Nathan the executor of the estate of Albert Einstein, who- A close friend of Einstein? A close friend of Einstein and of mine, even today. And so we took the Rockwell Kent case and the Walter Brailee cases to the Supreme Court where we argued the constitutional right to travel despite political qualifil, qualifications or dis-qualifications. And at that time you know, Mrs. Shipley was the director of the Passport Office and even Dean Acheson wrote an article, who was quoted in an article called, "Mrs. Shipley says No." That when he asked her to give passports, he was the secretary of state, she said absolutely not. Now she was the Czarina. She was a Czarina and she liked me very much. I liked her, too, personally but she was a terrible woman and she was standing there denying passports for political reasons. And we finally licked her and licked the State Department by a vote of five to four in the Supreme Court. Is this the Warren court? Is the Warren court. I, when I finished my oral argument in the Supreme Court, Frankfurter, who never liked me for some reason, I can't see any reason why he shouldn't have. Either refused to go to a party to celebrate the case. I was convinced I had lost and turned out I had won, five to four. When that decision came down, I would say a 100,000 Americans then began to travel who were afraid even to apply for a passport. And that was the one case in my entire life and career that I feel closest to, more than anything else, the right to travel. That ca- the right to travel [unintelligible]. That case really had repercussions for about 100,000 Americans who were afraid to apply because they may have signed petitions or did something. Precisely. We're talking about the 50s? We're talking about the late 40s and the early 50s. The beginning of a Cold War becoming more frigid and Joe McCarthy just becoming coming, coming into flower. Precisely. And but you won that case, at that time. That's right. And the court was going in a different direction. In almost every other case but we won it here and I've often wondered whether it was that Frankfurter who was on our side for the first time, somehow or other felt that the idea of American citizenship and the value of travel appealed to him. He was the fifth vote. He was the fifth vote. I lost him in almost every other case. No, the other two, obviously Black and Douglas. Of course. In addition to Warren and Brennan. Warren and. Oh, Brennan was there. Brennan was there. I lost Clark. Clark the father of the- This is interesting. Ramsey Clark's father. We have Ramsey Clark who would be your colleague in so many In many things His father was Tom Clark who voted against you. No, Ramsey and I are good friends even though he ordered the prosecution of my client, Benjamin Spock. Well perhaps we come to that. By the way, that the tremendous transformation. Or not transformation but change. Growth of Ramsey Clark is one of the remarkable stories of our day, I think. Agreed. I think he's one of the great citizens of the country today. He's always available for any important cause. To the young students here and [graduates of] University of Chicago Law School. Hey, that proves the point what a great law school it About, about what? How many years behind me? About 10 years behind me. Would you believe it? Yeah. There's one who came through. U of C Law School. He's a graduate and the so is Posner and so is Estabrook. I've heard those. And so is Scalia. I've heard that. I've met him. And so is. Who'd I forget? Bork. These are four Reagan appointees to federal courts. Yup. They're the threats. They're the threats to American civil liberties today. They're what? They are the threats to America civil How? How? Why so? Well I think there's a great danger in the light of. I've heard Scalia talk and I of course read opinions that one of them probably Bork. No maybe not. Maybe he is too scowl. He, one of them may turn out to be on the Supreme Court. If Reagan appoints anybody he will take one of them and then we will will we will be [unintelligible] [unintelligible] something to be unwished. Yeah. Yes. Boy, but that may be. So, we're talking about appointee's this is over and beyond this administration these four years something that is forever and many of these are young. Right? The president, this president, probably appoints more younger people to the judiciary than any other president in American history. And I think he's determined to fashion the court permanently not just in his period of time. Permanently in his image. So no matter then as you see it as a lawyer, we'll come to the cases you talked about. Sure. Right you mentioned Spock, in a moment. Then over and beyond assuming there's a different administration of different orientation, whereas, the federal judiciary will be Reaganesque. It will be- Time, long time to come For 40 years to come. It will be Reaganesque. That's some heritage for a president to leave. Boy oh boy. We have to worry. What happens then to [unintelligible] you. Rockwell Kent was the case when you won. You mentioned Dr. Spock. Now we come to the 60's, don't Well, the, the. All of these people to go back to your earlier question, all of these people became friends after they became clients. And I love them all. I regarded all of them as the great citizens of the country and of the world. And Dr. Spock, of course, is as sho-, I'm having breakfast with him tomorrow morning, really deserves a halo. He is so remarkable not only for what he's done for children but his, his for example in the Spock case when he was indicted for conspiracy. When wa- the case was now what? It was a criminal prosecution brought on the last day of 1967 charging Dr. Spock and four other people with conspiring to persuade young men not to carry their draft cards. And a- This is during the Vietnam War? During the Vietnam War, of course and many of these co-conspirators such as Spock never knew one another or had met them on a platform in passing and on President Johnson's orders I believe, this prosecution was brought by Ramsey Clark. And I defended Dr. Spock. So Ramsey Clark was the, was the prosecutor. That's right. I defended Dr. Spock and James St. Clair who ultimately represented the President Nixon. Defended, another represented another defendant. Pardon me just a parenthetical comment. There's an irony here that's marvelous, the switches that occurred. James St. Clair who was Nixon's attorney during the Watergate hearings was defending one of the co-clients, of yours. Exactly. And Ramsey Clark was Later became the advocate. His devlop- was the prosecutor. [unintelligible] Along with Spock, who were the other clients? Reverend William Sloane Coffin was the most famous of the group and he was represented by James St. Clair. Was Berrigan part of that? No. Berrigan was not part of that. Mitchell Goodman was another, a lovely young man was brought in as a co-conspirator. I can't reme-Michael Ferber. And finally one of the heads of the Institute of Policy Studies, Marcus Raskin. Marcus. So this was a conspiracy even though they had never met, never known each other- Hardly knew each other. about each other. That keep young draft age and for character [unintelligible]-what happens? Well four of them were convicted including Dr. Spock and we won in the Court of Appeals. We won with Spock on the ground that there was no evidence to justify the indictment and the conviction and therefore there was an outright direction of acquittal by the Court of Appeals. The other defendants won on another theory which would have permitted a new trial. Namely the judge had by his instructions in a sense coerced the jury. But the government decided, must have been Ramsey, not to, have, try them again. So that was Dr. Spock's one major criminal prosecution and he was an extraordinary man. At one point in the examination that I had of him, he said something which would have tended to separate himself by accident from the other defendants and that night we met with one of the counsel and I said, "How do you like Dr. Spock's testimony?" He said, "Well it seemed as if he was distancing himself from the other defendants." Spock was there listening. The next day, we agreed I would ask him a question. That question helped, helped to inculpate him but he did it because he didn't want to show himself as being more protected. [hand hitting table] That is how extraordinary he is and was. Yeah. We're talking Leonard Bourdain, civil liberties lawyer. To put it mildly, an excellent one with a long, great track record of defending those who espouse, what at the time would be unpopular cause that later on may become that which is accepted order of the day. That thing I just raised, that matter of unpopular at the time yet years later may be acceptable of course. Thoughts on that after we hear this. [pause] So resuming with Leonard Boudin, lawyer who is a guest by the way of the University of Chicago Law School class. Isn't that right? How do you find the young law students today, generally? I like law students. I've taught at Stanford recently and at Harvard earlier and Yale and I find them removing themselves from the inertness that existed a few years ago and very interested in social causes. [hand hitting table] Today I was able to have a meeting with about 12 young law students and I have talked before half a dozen groups in the last couple of days. I find them they're all asking, "What are the social issues [of] today in which law students can be of value?" Very different from 15, 20 years ago. You find this. This is interesting. We hear more and more talk. You know the word yuppies a much overused word. It does represent about five percent of the young. But nonetheless the one to whom more the com-the commercials are aimed at. And we hear more and more talk of apathy of the young. Of no sense of past or history of young out to make it big in the corporate world. Did you find? I don't find-well, I admit that most of the people when they leave law schools will work for corporate law firms, who will pay them $60,000 dollars a year for the first year. [hand hitting table] We will pay $22,000 dollars a year.[hand hitting table] When we have it. But I find that the law students who are applying for jobs to my firm are increasing in number each year in the last five years. They come from having been law clerks for judges, kind we prefer actually in our office. And they all want to do civil liberties work of the kind that we do. So I am very impressed. And regardless of the particular law school whether it's Stanford, which is considered conservative. Or University of Chicago or Harvard or Yale where I just spent a week, they are interested in problems and I see the future of the world with the law students. Medical students, I don't know, but I think it's true of medical also today. Of course. And also with the young women in law class, the number. I had not meant to exclude women when I described. Oh you mean the fact No. I meant [unintelligible] phenomenon. Oh that's right. As the, as the number of women in the law classes. In my class at Harvard where I taught in many years ago there were eight women in a class of 158 and they were silent until Dr. Spock was a guest speaker and then they moved in to attack him. I was the U of C Law School, '31 to '34. There was about 200 something like two women and both of them were married to fellow students. That's it. Today I suppose U of C Law School has how many in the class? A A third. Thirty-three percent is not bad. So you find something going on. There is something going on Something And very impressed. So we're gonna continue with what we're talking about. It was Spock and some of the cases because there are. Julian Bond. Julian Bond of Georgia was one of your clients. He What was the what was the trouble? He was a black legislator who had been a member of SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. And he made a statement of support for the Vietnam War whereupon the- Support against- against the Quite right. Against the war whereupon the Georgia legislature to which he had been elected by the people refused to admit him as a member, refused to let him take an oath of office. And then he was reelected or elected again and they again refused. And I was asked by him to represent him in the Supreme Court to declare that what Georgia had done was unconstitutional in violation of his First Amendment rights. And the court unanimously held that his rights were protected by the First Amendment and the Georgia could not exclude him and he is today I think still in the state legislature. What happens to you, by the way. You're the lawyer [representing?] in these unpopular causes. Does it effect you in any way -- your livelihood, your reputation, in respectable circles? I don't th-well I think that some groups in the government like the House on Unamerican Activities Committee and the Internal Security Subcommittee and perhaps particular federal prosecutors have a conception of me which is not very favorable. On the other hand I have found that my relationship with judges from the first day I began to practice law in 1936 has been very good and that the judges have not felt any bias against me. Now part of that is due to the fact that I've always written legal article for The Law Reviews and I've always taught in law schools so that I'm put in a kind of a scholarly equation. But my relationship with judges is very good. I remember once when I was representing the Cuban government in the early days the government was about to prosecute me criminally for refusing to register as a foreign agent. My view was that we didn't have to register. But in papers that were ultimately discovered, we saw they were really thinking of indicting me. But we brought a civil action preempting the area and while we lost in the Supreme Court, A - we were never indicted. We registered and then Congress passed a law exempting lawyers from registering because of corporate lawyers on Wall Street didn't want to register. They didn't help us in the case but they weren't willing to register. That would set a bad precedent. Exactly. But I think I've had a almost as good a relationship with government lawyers and judges with a few exceptions of the wild ones. Because you are considered, as you are a scholar, you prepare things and you also write for the Law Review. So you have a rep-. I've been lucky than most. I was gonna say- since four students, law students UC are here, seated in the studio. How do you, if I ask you a simplistic sort of question, prepare for the case? Just elementary matters like say the case of right to travel. Do you look for precedent? You look through books? Old law, law, old statutes or what? How how do you prepare? Oddly enough with respect to the right to travel, I owed a great deal of my work to reading two student articles. Student articles. One in the Stanford Law Review and one in the Yale Law Journal. And those student articles did all the work that lawyers would ordinarily do. So that I've always felt a great debt to them. And from that, I began building my own research into, to what extent does Congress try to interfere with the right to travel. To what extent the president and then I moved of course to the conceptual things like Zachariah Chafee's view on the importance of travel for educational reasons. And I try to put it in a constitutional framework. I overprepare unfortunately. I think we go too far. But I, I do feel in many cases, a debt to the students who worked on the Law Reviews. Why do you say your overprepare? You go too far. Is there such a thing as going too far? Only in terms of time. Oh work! [unintelligible] but you do. I do. I think particularly in the area of the right to travel which I fixed on so early in my life [unintelligible] Right to travel readings. I imagine readings of non-law works are important, too, aren't they? Precisely. To give you a historical perspective. Precisely. Oddly enough in the, in the travel cases, I was reading something written by someone whom I knew Felix Frankfurter admired a great deal. I put that reference in a footnote in order to affect his And of course, he was on the bench. He was on the bench. And it may have. It was And I understand his ego was not little. Oh it was a great ego! And when I sometimes argue before him, he didn't like me. I don't know why. As I said before, he would swivel his chair around and turn his back to me. 'Mazing! There was his name. You cited his name. That's pretty good. Yeah. I couldn't do that I was standing up. I didn't have a swivel chair. So then, I imagine calling on precedent perspective, the conspiracy case. Now here of course is a long history going back, this is the hundredth anniversary of the Haymarket. Of course. Tragedy. Of course. And they were of course conspira-we know they weren't there. The guys who were hanged. Correct. They weren't even there when the bomb was thrown. Yet four were hanged because the conspiracy to incite was added [unintelligible] Correct. They have spoken and their, their words you could be a later date And actually their words had nothing to do with a bomb that was exploded there. Their words were general attacks on society and yet those general attacks were regarded as a conspiracy. And so when you prepare for the Spock case, say. Well when I do that I will look into all the conspiracy cases, particularly political conspiracy cases and try to distinguish them. You go back then. You go back in history? Go back as far back as the, as the English history. [hand hitting table] I don't stop with 1789. And oddly enough in the Spock case where the Court of Appeals knocked out one of my arguments, they relied upon a case that my [hand hitting table]uncle had lost in 1918. Your uncle Louie Boudin. My uncle Louie Boudin, involving a conspiracy similar to that of Spock. I'll We won of ultimately. But Judge [Aldridge?] took particular pleasure because he knew who my uncle was inciting that case against me. So that was during World War I. That's right. And what I do normally is I try, which most lawyers don't do I suspect, to try to read the original briefs in these old cases and particularly when I teach in law schools where the, the Xeroxing facilities are free. I try to get the old brief of the 1800's and get them from the archives and have them Xerox and then I use that material in historical cases. Yeah. So history plays a History is a very large part in that. And now when Gene Debs was sent to prison during World War I for protesting the war. [unintelligible] certain speech he made in Canton Ohio. Right [unintelligible] Was that conspiracy? That was. No I think that was a single charge of obstructing the draft. Ah hah But the basic First Amendment problems were the same as those we had with Spock. So we've come to the First Amendment. [unintelligible] a little about the First Amendment. You find that eroding today in some quarters? Yes, I find in the case I lost in the Supreme Court for example, Regan against Wald which involved- How long ago Right to travel to Cuba. Three years ago. Now George Wald No. It's George Wald's wife, Ruth Hubbard, a doctor. And a wife of the Nobel Laureate. Correct. We brought that lawsuit to declare illegal unconstitutional the president's restriction on, or Treasury's restriction on the use of money to go [hand hitting table] to Cuba. The government argued that they were interested in preventing Cuba from having money which would build up a tourist industry which would eventually result in revolution in Latin America. Completely mythical argument. The real argument of the government, the real reason was, they didn't want Americans to know Cubans. It's very hard to hate people you know. It's easy to hate them if your [unintelligible] and read about 'em in the newspaper. And I won before the Court of Appeals in the First Circuit and lost in the Supreme Court by a vote of 5 to 4. This is the current court? Current court. Five to four? Terrible opinion written by Justice Rehnquist. Rehnquist. Terrible opinion. Now the four this would be Brennan and, and Marshall and who were the- Blackman. Blackman wrote the dissenting opinion. And oddly enough, I lost Justice Stevens and I got Justice Powell. Powell. Strange. Now this is interesting. Now, we have several people who would be Twilight Zone [unintelligible] Exactly. Blackman is an interesting figure, isn't he? One of the great justices today. Really? I, I think he is absolutely remarkable. The concern he has for basic human values is extraordinary and it's reflected increasingly in his decisions. Really? So it isn't Brennan and Marshall alone? Blackman is a very important figure. And it may very well be that the court was almost going our way because the opinion written by Blackman is so long and detailed without necessary reference to the majority opinion that I think that the court at one point would have voted for me and he was writing the opinion. You know, I think one of the ironies is you lost five to four which means that Whizzer White, who's a Kennedy appointee voted against you, as is very often against these matters. So here we have we always think of Nixon appoint as a Reagan. There was a Kennedy appointee. White, who very often votes the other way. And of course following your line of thinking there were two great appointees of President Eisenhower. Brennan and, and Warren. So there it is. So there's no rule of thumb here, is there? But there is one rule of thumb. Yes. This, this president is not making any mistakes. This president is watching every appointee under consideration. And there will be no possibility of a liberal Supreme Court justice. Who, who would be your- are his legal advisers in matters of this sort? Who would he call upon? What sort- Attorney General Meese I think- Meese? would be a key adviser. Meese, I think, will not get on the Supreme Court. I think even though he was cleared by Jake Stein, special prosecutor, of having committed a criminal act [hand hitting table], I think he's been hurt too much to be on the Supreme Court. On the other hand, I don't know. The Senate and the American people can swallow a lot sometimes [hand hitting table]. But I think Meese will be the principal adviser and then this coterie of people in the White House will play their part. My own response is, "Boy!". Boy! Boy oh boy! We're talking to Leonard Boudin, civil liberties lawyer primarily, an old friend by the way of Dr. Charlie Clements, who you know was a guest on this program not too long ago on the subject of Nicaragua and what next. And I was thinking let's take a pause for this message. And ask about more of your cases and your reflections, too, after this. [pause]. So resuming with Leonard Boudin and the cases. Now I'm also thinkin' I suppose somewhere someone called you courageous. I know you, you you sort of shy away from that. But you are. You see-, you took cases many lawyers would turn down or have turned down. During the McCarthy days especially. Let's say Paul Robeson. I say Paul Robeson to you. He was your client. Wasn't he? He was. What was the case? What was the circumstance? He had been denied a passport by the State Department. And even worse was one of the few Americans if not the only one to be forbidden by the immigration people from leaving the United States for Canada. And he, as we know is one of our great men in America. One of our great singers and I consider it the most tragic case of a man whose inability to perform in the United States because of the Blacklist, the McCarthy period inability to go abroad where he would have been welcomed resulting in about a 10-year hiatus in his singing which I think had an effect on his voice, and psychologically as well. And he came to me ultimately once I was involved in the Kent and the Nathan and the other cases and we started a lawsuit, another lawsuit. He had lost the earlier ones to declare the ban on his travel to be illegal. And I'd argue the thing in the Court of Appeals when Kent against Dulles came down and then immediately Paul Robeson came to my office and we had a press interview and he was holding up his new passport. And within a week or a month he left for Europe where he had a triumphal tour but they had destroyed that great voice. Yeah. We hear about nonpersons in other countries and that's true. Now he was declared a nonperson here. Was that. Perhaps one of the great voices of our time. One of the great talents of our, of our time. So the deprivation was to the American public as much as to him, of course. But that was your case that- Yes. that was. But he won because we had won the basic case of Rockwell Kent. I really regret that I never got to know him as well as I should have. You know you take a case and you're working on it and you don't think the client needs to be around very much particularly if he's a great man. You know you mentioned Einstein a moment ago. You know, Einstein himself, by the way, was under attack too. We're talking about Albert Einstein. Yes. I know that. I'm a very close friend of his closest friend in the United States, Dr. Otto Nathan- Who is the executor- executor of the estate. Now we come to Otto Nathan. And Otto was denied a passport because he was a member of the teacher's union or he was a member of this group and of that group not the Communist Party even. And they would not give him a passport. And so I brought this lawsuit for him and a district judge, Judge Schweinhaut, now dead, directed the State Department to give him a hearing. And the State Department stalled and stalled and stalled. Refusing to present - have a hearing at which evidence could be shown. Why? Because I didn't think any evidence could justify the denial of a right to travel. When suddenly Einstein died, and Dr. Nathan wanted to go to Switzerland to meet with the great scientists of the world to discuss what should be done with the Einstein Papers which are extremely valuable. And so I made a motion in the district court to hold Secretary of State Dulles in contempt for failing to give us the hearing the judge had ordered. The State Department was demoralized. They really thought a judge would put a State Department official in jail. I knew it never would happen [handclap]. And I asked the judge to do something very unusual. In contempt you normally ask for a fine or you ask that somebody be put in jail. I said, "No. Give us the ultimate relief of a passport. Forget about the hearing." And the judge ordered a passport to be given to Dr. Nathan. The governor immediately went to the Court of Appeals. Was represented then by, by Harold Greene, now a federal judge. And the court of appeals stayed the order. Thereby looked as if the order of Judge Schweinhaut, it looked as if we were losing when it stayed the order but had a condition. Give them a hearing in three days. Give us the evidence that you have against them in five days. Come [handslap]up here back in seven. Had a remarkable Court of Appeals then, Judge Edgington and two other great judges. And within two days the State Department came back in and said, "We gave him a hearing. We just didn't tell him about it. And we giving him a passport. And Judge Edgington wrote an opinion. That was Bazelon and Fay with him. Which said ironically, three days ago they said it would be a national security risk to have him go and they've just given them a passport. Yeah. [hand hitting table] By you mention this Court of Appeals, this the one outside Washington? The Washington. The, the Well, now it's the Mikva court, isn't it? It's Mik-, a great judge, Judge Mikva. Yeah, I was about to say, in the midst of all these appointees. Did you say, "Mitzvah"? Yeah, mitzvahh and Mik- and and I'm thinking about the, the how that stands out in these days of, shall we say shadowy appointees'. Here's out of Chicago, of course, former congressman. And that's one of the en-and as you see it enlightened courts. Yes. Now remember they have a number of judges who are increasingly appointed so that the court is a close thing it's a large court that has nine to eleven judges. Oh, it does have that many, that's right. And a lot of it depends on which panel you get. You can get a panel overloaded with people on the right. Oh! In short. The panel includes three judges? Three I