Sweezy v. New Hampshire
United States Supreme Court case
Sweezy v. New Hampshire, 354 U.S. 234 (1957), was a case before the United States Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that jailing an academic when he refused to answer questions about university lectures he had given was a violation of due process. On a larger scale, the decision established constitutional protections for academic freedom and reined in the investigative powers of state legislatures.
Background
In 1951, the New Hampshire General Court, the legislature of New Hampshire, passed an act that empowered the New Hampshire Attorney General to investigate subversion; that act, the Subversive Activities Act of 1951, was codified into state law as RSA 588. The law provided for fines of up to $20,000 and imprisonment for twenty years for failing to cooperate with the Attorney General during an investigation. In 1953, the legislature amended the law to allow the Attorney General to sit as a one-man legislative committee, subpoenaing witnesses, requesting funding, and holding public or in camera sessions as he saw fit; thus delegated these powers, Attorney General Louis C. Wyman proceeded to begin his investigation of Communist subversion in New Hampshire later that year.
His investigation looked into the connections, backgrounds, and beliefs of individuals such as Elba Chase Nelson, a former Communist candidate for governor; Willard Uphaus, a theologian and director of the New Hampshire-based World Fellowship Center, Florence Luscomb, the architect and activist; and Paul Sweezy, an economist and magazine editor. The latter two both contributed to the socialist magazine Monthly Review and the magazine of the Socialist Union of America, The American Socialist.
Sweezy was a Marxist economist and the founding editor of the Monthly Review. In January 1954, he was subpoenaed by the state Attorney General to answer questions related to his connections to socialists and communists; he was later ordered to appear again in June, to discuss the notes of a March 22 lecture on Marxism he had delivered at the University of New Hampshire.
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