Significance: This ruling, which occurred during the hysteria of McCarthyism, maintained that specific individuals could not be punished in statutes.
Background: In the late 1940s and early 1950s, fear of communism led some Americans to accuse others of being communist supporters disloyal to the United States. These accusations often had grave consequences. Robert Morss Lovett and two other federal employees were accused of being disloyal, and Congress enacted a law that the federal government could not pay them their salaries. Lovett and the others sued, arguing that the bill of attainder clauses in the U.S. Constitution forbid any legislative act, on either federal or state levels, that subjects someone to punishment without a trial by jury.
Decision: This case was argued on May 3 and 6, 1946, and decided on June 3, 1946, by a vote of 8 to 0. Justice Hugo Black spoke for the Court, with Justices Stanley Reed and Felix Frankfurter concurring and Justice Robert Jackson not participating. The Court found this law to be a bill of attainder, or a violation of civil and political rights, and struck it down.
Excerpt from the Opinion of the Court: “When our Constitution and Bill of Rights were written, our ancestors had ample reason to know that legislative trials and punishments were too dangerous to liberty to exist in the nation of free men they envisioned. And so they proscribed [forbid] bills of attainder. . . . Much as we regret to declare that an Act of Congress violates the Constitution, we have no alternative here.”
