Report to President’s Committee on Civil Rights, Federal Criminal Jurisdiction Over Violations of Civil Rights
This is a report to the President’s Committee on Civil Rights.
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OCR Page 1 of 27January
15, 1947
RECORTS
To: President's Committee on Civil Rights
the
TEDERAL CRIMINAL JURISDICTION OVER VIOLATIONS OF
CIVIL RIGHTS
"Civil rights" is not a technical legal term, but a phrase of
popular currency applied somewhat indiscriminately to a miscellaneous
group of rights, interests and situations. Typical "civil rights" cases
involve such varied matters as freedom of speech, press, assembly and
ballot; and unreasonable searches and seizures; religious freedom;
censorship of the arts; racial, labor, pacifist, and alien rights. Per-
haps their one common characteristic is a tendency to give rise to charges,
well or ill-founded, of conduct offensive to moral or political ideals
stated or suggested in the Constitution. It is usually not difficult to
cite something in the Constitution that sounds as though it bears on a
given "civil liberties" problem, be it "due process of law," "equal pro-
tection of the laws," "freedom of speech, " or "cruel and unusual punish-
ments. 11 It is this invocation of the Constitution which ives the prhase
"civil rights" its peculiar force.
Hopeful complainants are too often unaware that the underlying
conception of the Federal Government as one of delegated powers operat-
ing against a background of reserved States' rights leaves the Tederal
Constitution largely unconcerned with the social and governmental situa-
tions which give rise to civil liberties problems. The label "civil
rights" sometimes raises but never answers the question whether a par-
ticular situation comes within the protection of the Constitution and
the Federal laws. Its use herein will therefore be purely descriptive,
referring to the miscellaneous group of situations roughly covered in
the list stated above There is no law of civil liberties as such.
N5.188
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