California Jurist Warns Against Graded Citizenship

Declaring that “those who started as instigators of oppression of a minority often turned out to be the next victims,” Supreme Court Justice William Douglas has warned, in a speech at the Commonwealth Club here, that “there must not grow up in this country any second or fourth class citizenship.” Justice Douglas asserted:

“There is only one class of citizenship in this country. There is no room for any inferior grade. Where one has been allowed, the result has been the downward spiral of disunity. Then hate and intolerance have been incorporated. Under those conditions the enemies of democracy invariably have risen to power. Under those conditions there is an insistence on a conformity which is the beginning of a disintegrating process.

“Every non-conformist who is beaten, every practitioner of the right of free speech who is jailed, every unpopular exponent of a religious faith who is deprived of his constitutional rights, bring every free man a step closer to incarceration or punishment, or discreet and frightened conformity. Infraction of the Bill of Rights knows no terminal points. We know from the experience of other peoples that what starts as suppression of an unpopular minority swings as easily to persecutions on the right or on the left, until few can afford to be non-conformists. Those who started as instigators of oppression of a minority often turned out to be the next victims. We know that the concentration camps of Europe are not operated on racial, economic, social or intellectual lines.

“We should ever be mindful that all the battles for freedom are not won in the courts. Only a persistent positive translation of the liberal faith into the thoughts and acts of the community is the real reliance against the unabated temptation to straightjacket the human mind. Vigilant patrol of the domestic scene against infraction of these fundamental Constitutional rights will guarantee that the American sense of fair play will carry on.”