Total War & Civil Liberties

I. Total warA. HistoryB. Legal Significance

II. WWII Criminal JusticeA. Conscripted worldB. Japanese InternmentC. Atomic Bomb and Collective

GuiltIII. Cold War Justice

A. The Communist ProblemB. Suppressing DissentC. Treason

IV. Crime and IdeologyA. Publicizing InjusticeB. Defending “Law and Order”

History

Sherman’s March to the Sea, 1864

Legal Significance

• State uses criminal law to suppress dissent

• Collective guilt, collective punishment

Conscripted World

• Guernica– Three hours, planes kill 1,600 (1/3 town population)

• The Blitz– Germany bombs London 57 straight nights in 1941

• Dresden– Allies bomb the “Florence of the Elbe” killing 35K to

135K civilians • Tokyo

– US firebombs kill 80K, leave 1M homeless

Japanese Interment

• E. O. 9066 -- 2/19/1942• 112,000 interred (3/4

citizens)• USSC upholds in two cases

– Hirabayashi (1943)– Korematsu (1944)

A-Bomb

• Hiroshima– 100,000 killed – 180K by 1946

• Nagasaki– 74,000 killed

• Collective Guilt

Communist Problem

• WWII victory ends alliance

• Iron Curtain descends • Cold War

– Ideological struggle– Contest for prestige– Spies– Internal security

Stalin, Roosevelt, & Churchill at Teheran, 1943

Suppressing Dissent

• Smith Act, 1940– crime to advocate revolution

• Internal Security Act, 1950– registration, deportation of radicals

• Dennis v. United States, 1951– upholds Smith Act convictions

• McCarran-Walter Immigration Act, 1952

– restricts immigration of radicals

Treason• Julius and Ethel Rosenberg

– Communist Party members

– Her brother worked at Los Alamos

– Delivered atomic secrets to the USSR

– Sentenced to death

Publicizing Injustice

• Communists attack criminal justice system as a tool of class oppression & white supremacy.– Scottsboro boys (1931)

• How do we distinguish genuine compassion & indignation from exploitative agitation?

Defending “Law & Order”

• FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover

• Creates card index with 450,000 names, 60,000 bios.

• In 1959 Hoover had 489 agents following alleged subversives but only 4 investigating organized crime.