MR. CHIEF JUSTICE BURGER delivered the opinion of the Court.
Respondents brought this class action in the District Court seeking declaratory and injunctive relief on their claim that their rights were being invaded by the Department of the Army's alleged "surveillance of lawful and peaceful civilian political activity." The petitioners in response described the activity as "gathering by lawful means . . . [and] maintaining and using in their intelligence activities . . . information relating to potential or actual civil disturbances [or] street demonstrations." In connection with respondents' motion for a preliminary injunction and petitioners' motion to dismiss the complaint, both parties filed a number of affidavits with the District Court and presented their oral arguments at a hearing on the two motions. On the basis of the pleadings,
On appeal, a divided Court of Appeals reversed and ordered the case remanded for further proceedings. We granted certiorari to consider whether, as the Court of Appeals held, respondents presented a justiciable controversy in complaining of a "chilling" effect on the exercise of their First Amendment rights where such effect is allegedly caused, not by any "specific action of the Army against them, [but] only [by] the existence and operation of the intelligence gathering and distributing system, which is confined to the Army and related civilian investigative agencies." 144 U. S. App. D. C. 72, 78, 444 F.2d 947, 953. We reverse.
(1)
There is in the record a considerable amount of background information regarding the activities of which respondents complained; this information is set out primarily in the affidavits that were filed by the parties in connection with the District Court's consideration of respondents' motion for a preliminary injunction and petitioners' motion to dismiss. See Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 12 (b). A brief review of that information is helpful to an understanding of the issues.
The President is authorized by 10 U. S. C. § 331
The system put into operation as a result of the Army's 1967 experience consisted essentially of the collection of information about public activities that were thought to have at least some potential for civil disorder, the reporting of that information to Army Intelligence headquarters at Fort Holabird, Maryland, the dissemination of these reports from headquarters to major Army posts around the country, and the storage of the reported information in a computer data bank located at Fort Holabird. The information itself was collected by a variety of means, but it is significant that the principal sources of information were the news media and publications in general circulation. Some of the information came from Army Intelligence agents who attended meetings that were open to the public and who wrote field reports describing the meetings, giving such data as the name of the sponsoring organization, the identity of speakers, the approximate number of persons in attendance, and an indication of whether any disorder occurred. And still other information was provided to the Army by civilian law enforcement agencies.
The material filed by the Government in the District Court reveals that Army Intelligence has field offices in various parts of the country; these offices are staffed in the aggregate with approximately 1,000 agents, 94%
By early 1970 Congress became concerned with the scope of the Army's domestic surveillance system; hearings on the matter were held before the Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary. Meanwhile, the Army, in the course of a review of the system, ordered a significant reduction in its scope. For example, information referred to in the complaint as the "blacklist" and the records in the computer data bank at Fort Holabird were found unnecessary and were destroyed, along with other related records. One copy of all the material relevant to the instant suit was retained, however, because of the pendency of this litigation. The review leading to the destruction of these records was said at the time the District Court ruled on petitioners' motion to dismiss to be a "continuing" one (App. 82), and the Army's policies at that time were represented as follows in a letter from the Under Secretary of the Army to Senator Sam J. Ervin, Chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights:
In briefs for petitioners filed with this Court, the Solicitor General has called our attention to certain directives issued by the Army and the Department of Defense subsequent to the District Court's dismissal of the action; these directives indicate that the Army's review of the needs of its domestic intelligence activities has indeed been a continuing one and that those activities have since been significantly reduced.
(2)
The District Court held a combined hearing on respondents' motion for a preliminary injunction and petitioners' motion for dismissal and thereafter announced its holding that respondents had failed to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. It was the view of the District Court that respondents failed to allege any action on the part of the Army that was unlawful in itself and further failed to allege any injury or any realistic threats to their rights growing out of the Army's actions.
The court took note of petitioners' argument "that nothing [detrimental to respondents] has been done, that nothing is contemplated to be done, and even if some action by the Army against [respondents] were possibly foreseeable, such would not present a presently justiciable controversy." With respect to this argument, the Court of Appeals had this to say:
Our examination of the record satisfies us that the Court of Appeals properly identified the issue presented, namely, whether the jurisdiction of a federal court may be invoked by a complainant who alleges that the exercise of his First Amendment rights is being chilled by the mere existence, without more, of a governmental investigative and data-gathering activity that is alleged to be broader in scope than is reasonably necessary for the accomplishment of a valid governmental purpose. We conclude, however, that, having properly identified the issue, the Court of Appeals decided that issue incorrectly.
For example, the petitioner in Baird v. State Bar of Arizona had been denied admission to the bar solely because of her refusal to answer a question regarding the organizations with which she had been associated in the past. In announcing the judgment of the Court,
The decisions in these cases fully recognize that governmental action may be subject to constitutional challenge even though it has only an indirect effect on the
The respondents do not meet this test; their claim, simply stated, is that they disagree with the judgments made by the Executive Branch with respect to the type and amount of information the Army needs and that the very existence of the Army's data-gathering system produces a constitutionally impermissible chilling effect upon the exercise of their First Amendment rights. That alleged "chilling" effect may perhaps be seen as arising from respondents' very perception of the system as inappropriate to the Army's role under our form of government, or as arising from respondents' beliefs that it is inherently dangerous for the military to be concerned with activities in the civilian sector, or as arising from respondents' less generalized yet speculative apprehensiveness that the Army may at some future date misuse the information in some way that would cause direct harm to respondents.
Stripped to its essentials, what respondents appear to be seeking is a broad-scale investigation, conducted by themselves as private parties armed with the subpoena power of a federal district court and the power of cross-examination, to probe into the Army's intelligence-gathering activities, with the district court determining at the conclusion of that investigation the extent to which those activities may or may not be appropriate to the Army's mission. The following excerpt from the opinion of the Court of Appeals suggests the broad sweep implicit in its holding:
Carried to its logical end, this approach would have the federal courts as virtually continuing monitors of the wisdom and soundness of Executive action; such a role is appropriate for the Congress acting through its committees and the "power of the purse"; it is not the role of the judiciary, absent actual present or immediately threatened injury resulting from unlawful governmental action.
We, of course, intimate no view with respect to the propriety or desirability, from a policy standpoint, of the challenged activities of the Department of the Army; our conclusion is a narrow one, namely, that on this record the respondents have not presented a case for resolution by the courts.
The concerns of the Executive and Legislative Branches in response to disclosure of the Army surveillance activities —and indeed the claims alleged in the complaint— reflect a traditional and strong resistance of Americans to any military intrusion into civilian affairs. That tradition has deep roots in our history and found early expression, for example, in the Third Amendment's explicit prohibition against quartering soldiers in private homes without consent and in the constitutional provisions for civilian control of the military. Those prohibitions are not directly presented by this case, but their philosophical underpinnings explain our traditional insistence on limitations on military operations in peacetime. Indeed, when presented with claims of judicially cognizable injury
Reversed.
MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS, with whom MR. JUSTICE MARSHALL concurs, dissenting.
I
If Congress had passed a law authorizing the armed services to establish surveillance over the civilian population, a most serious constitutional problem would be presented. There is, however, no law authorizing surveillance over civilians, which in this case the Pentagon concededly had undertaken. The question is whether such authority may be implied. One can search the Constitution in vain for any such authority.
The start of the problem is the constitutional distinction between the "militia" and the Armed Forces. By Art. I, § 8, of the Constitution the militia is specifically confined to precise duties: "to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions."
This obviously means that the "militia" cannot be sent overseas to fight wars. It is purely a domestic arm of the governors of the several States,
Acting under that authority, Congress has provided a code governing the Armed Services. That code sets the procedural standards for the Government and regulation of the land and naval forces. It is difficult to imagine how those powers can be extended to military surveillance over civilian affairs.
The most pointed and relevant decisions of the Court on the limitation of military authority concern the attempt of the military to try civilians. The first leading case was Ex parte Milligan, 4 Wall. 2, 124, where the Court noted that the conflict between "civil liberty" and "martial law" is "irreconcilable." The Court which made that announcement would have been horrified at the prospect of the military—absent a regime of martial law—establishing a regime of surveillance over civilians. The power of the military to establish such a system is obviously less than the power of Congress to authorize such surveillance. For the authority of Congress is restricted by its power to "raise" armies, Art. I, § 8; and, to repeat, its authority over the Armed Forces is stated in these terms, "To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces."
The upshot is that the Armed Services—as distinguished from the "militia"—are not regulatory agencies or bureaus that may be created as Congress desires and granted such powers as seem necessary and proper. The authority to provide rules "governing" the Armed Services means the grant of authority to the Armed
Our tradition reflects a desire for civilian supremacy and subordination of military power. The tradition goes back to the Declaration of Independence, in which it was recited that the King "has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power." Thus, we have the "militia" restricted to domestic use, the restriction of appropriations to the "armies" to two years, Art. I, § 8, and the grant of command over the armies and the militia when called into actual service of the United States to the President, our chief civilian officer. The tradition of civilian control over the Armed Forces was stated by Chief Justice Warren:
Thus, we have until today consistently adhered to the belief that
Madison expressed the fear of military dominance:
As Chief Justice Warren has observed, the safeguards in the main body of the Constitution did not satisfy the people on their fear and concern of military dominance:
The action in turning the "armies" loose on surveillance of civilians was a gross repudiation of our traditions. The military, though important to us, is subservient and restricted purely to military missions. It even took an Act of Congress to allow a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to address the Congress;
The act of turning the military loose on civilians even if sanctioned by an Act of Congress, which it has not been, would raise serious and profound constitutional questions. Standing as it does only on brute power and Pentagon policy, it must be repudiated as a usurpation dangerous to the civil liberties on which free men are dependent. For, as Senator Sam Ervin has said, "this claim of an inherent executive branch power of investigation and surveillance on the basis of people's beliefs and attitudes may be more of a threat to our internal security than any enemies beyond our borders." Privacy and Government Investigations, 1971 U. Ill. L. F. 137, 153.
II
The claim that respondents have no standing to challenge the Army's surveillance of them and the other members of the class they seek to represent is too transparent for serious argument. The surveillance of the Army over the civilian sector—a part of society hitherto immune from its control—is a serious charge. It is alleged that the Army maintains files on the membership, ideology, programs, and practices of virtually every activist political group in the country, including groups such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Clergy
Those are the allegations; and the charge is that the purpose and effect of the system of surveillance is to harass and intimidate the respondents and to deter them from exercising their rights of political expression, protest, and dissent "by invading their privacy, damaging their reputations, adversely affecting their employment and their opportunities for employment, and in other ways." Their fear is that "permanent reports of their activities will be maintained in the Army's data bank, and their `profiles' will appear in the so-called `Blacklist' and that all of this information will be released to numerous federal and state agencies upon request."
Judge Wilkey, speaking for the Court of Appeals, properly inferred that this Army surveillance "exercises a present inhibiting effect on their full expression and utilization of their First Amendment rights." 144 U. S. App. D. C. 72, 79, 444 F.2d 947, 954. That is the test. The "deterrent effect" on First Amendment rights by government oversight marks an unconstitutional intrusion, Lamont v. Postmaster General, 381 U.S. 301, 307. Or, as stated by MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN, "inhibition as well as prohibition against the exercise of precious First
As stated by the Supreme Court of New Jersey, "there is good reason to permit the strong to speak for the weak or the timid in First Amendment matters." Anderson v. Sills, 56 N.J. 210, 220, 265 A.2d 678, 684 (1970).
One need not wait to sue until he loses his job or until his reputation is defamed. To withhold standing to sue until that time arrives would in practical effect immunize from judicial scrutiny all surveillance activities, regardless of their misuse and their deterrent effect. As stated in Flast v. Cohen, 392 U.S. 83, 101, "in terms of Article III limitations on federal court jurisdiction, the question of standing is related only to whether the dispute sought to be adjudicated will be presented in an adversary context and in a form historically viewed as capable of judicial resolution." Or, as we put it in Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 204, the gist of the standing issue is whether the party seeking relief has "alleged such a personal stake in the outcome of the controversy as to assure that concrete adverseness which sharpens the presentation of issues upon which the court so largely depends for illumination of difficult constitutional questions."
The present controversy is not a remote, imaginary conflict. Respondents were targets of the Army's surveillance. First, the surveillance was not casual but massive and comprehensive. Second, the intelligence reports were regularly and widely circulated and were exchanged with reports of the FBI, state and municipal police departments, and the CIA. Third, the Army's
Finally, we know from the hearings conducted by Senator Ervin that the Army has misused or abused its reporting functions. Thus, Senator Ervin concluded that reports of the Army have been "taken from the Intelligence Command's highly inaccurate civil disturbance teletype and filed in Army dossiers on persons who have held, or were being considered for, security clearances, thus contaminating what are supposed to be investigative reports with unverified gossip and rumor. This practice directly jeopardized the employment and employment opportunities of persons seeking sensitive positions with the federal government or defense industry."
Surveillance of civilians is none of the Army's constitutional business and Congress has not undertaken to entrust it with any such function. The fact that since this litigation started the Army's surveillance may have been cut back is not an end of the matter. Whether there has been an actual cutback or whether the announcements are merely a ruse can be determined only after a hearing in the District Court. We are advised by an amicus curiae brief filed by a group of former Army Intelligence Agents that Army surveillance of civilians is rooted in secret programs of long standing:
This case involves a cancer in our body politic. It is a measure of the disease which afflicts us. Army surveillance, like Army regimentation, is at war with the principles of the First Amendment. Those who already walk submissively will say there is no cause for alarm. But submissiveness is not our heritage. The First Amendment was designed to allow rebellion to remain as our heritage. The Constitution was designed to keep government off the backs of the people. The Bill of Rights was added to keep the precincts of belief and expression, of the press, of political and social activities free from surveillance. The Bill of Rights was designed to keep agents of government and official eavesdroppers away from assemblies of people. The aim was to allow men to be free and independent and to assert their rights against government. There can be no influence more paralyzing of that objective than Army surveillance. When an intelligence officer looks over every nonconformist's shoulder in the library, or walks invisibly by his side in a picket line, or infiltrates his club, the America once extolled as the voice of liberty heard around the world no longer is
APPENDIX I TO OPINION OF DOUGLAS, J., DISSENTING
The narrowly circumscribed domestic role which Congress has by statute authorized the Army to play is clearly an insufficient basis for the wholesale civilian surveillance of which respondents complain. The entire domestic mission of the armed services is delimited by nine statutes.
Four define the Army's narrow role as a back-up for civilian authority where the latter has proved insufficient to cope with insurrection:
10 U. S. C. § 331:
"Whenever there is an insurrection in any State against its government, the President may, upon the request of its legislature or of its governor if the legislature cannot be convened, call into Federal service such of the militia of the other States, in the number requested by that State, and use such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary to suppress the insurrection."
10 U. S. C. § 332:
"Whenever the President considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State or Territory by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, he may call into Federal service such of the militia of any State, and use such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary to enforce those laws or to suppress the rebellion."
"The President, by using the militia or the armed forces, or both, or by any other means, shall take such measures as he considers necessary to suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy, if it—
"(1) so hinders the execution of the laws of that State, and of the United States within the State, that any part or class of its people is deprived of a right, privilege, immunity, or protection named in the Constitution and secured by law, and the constituted authorities of that State are unable, fail, or refuse to protect that right, privilege, or immunity, or to give that protection; or
"(2) opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws.
"In any situation covered by clause (1), the State shall be considered to have denied the equal protection of the laws secured by the Constitution."
10 U. S. C. § 334:
"Whenever the President considers it necessary to use the militia or the armed forces under this chapter, he shall, by proclamation, immediately order the insurgents to disperse and retire peaceably to their abodes within a limited time."
Two statutes, passed as a result of Reconstruction Era military abuses, prohibit military interference in civilian elections:
18 U. S. C. § 592:
"Whoever, being an officer of the Army or Navy, or other person in the civil, military, or naval service of the United States, orders, brings, keeps, or has under his authority or control any troops or armed men at any place where a general or special election is held, unless such force be necessary to repel armed enemies of the
"This section shall not prevent any officer or member of the armed forces of the United States from exercising the right of suffrage in any election district to which he may belong, if otherwise qualified according to the laws of the State in which he offers to vote."
18 U. S. C. § 593:
"Whoever, being an officer or member of the Armed Forces of the United States, prescribes or fixes or attempts to prescribe or fix, whether by proclamation, order or otherwise, the qualifications of voters at any election in any State; or
"Whoever, being such officer or member, prevents or attempts to prevent by force, threat, intimidation, advice or otherwise any qualified voter of any State from fully exercising the right of suffrage at any general or special election; or
"Whoever, being such officer or member, orders or compels or attempts to compel any election officer in any State to receive a vote from a person not legally qualified to vote; or
"Whoever, being such officer or member, imposes or attempts to impose any regulations for conducting any general or special election in a State, different from those prescribed by law; or
"Whoever, being such officer or member, interferes in any manner with an election officer's discharge of his duties—
"Shall be fined not more than $5,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both; and disqualified from holding any office of honor, profit or trust under the United States.
Another Reconstruction Era statute forbids the use of military troops as a posse comitatus:
18 U. S. C. § 1385:
"Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than two years, or both."
Finally, there are two specialized statutes. It was thought necessary to pass an Act of Congress to give the armed services some limited power to control prostitution near military bases, and an Act of Congress was required to enable a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to testify before Congress:
18 U. S. C. § 1384:
"Within such reasonable distance of any military or naval camp, station, fort, post, yard, base, cantonment, training or mobilization place as the Secretary of the Army, the Secretary of the Navy, the Secretary of the Air Force, or any two or all of them shall determine to be needful to the efficiency, health, and welfare of the Army, the Navy, or the Air Force, and shall designate and publish in general orders or bulletins, whoever engages in prostitution or aids or abets prostitution or procures or solicits for purposes of prostitution, or keeps or sets up a house of ill fame, brothel, or bawdy house, or receives any person for purposes of lewdness, assignation, or prostitution into any vehicle, conveyance, place, structure, or building, or permits any person to remain for
"The Secretaries of the Army, Navy, and Air Force and the Federal Security Administrator shall take such steps as they deem necessary to suppress and prevent such violations thereof, and shall accept the cooperation of the authorities of States and their counties, districts, and other political subdivisions in carrying out the purpose of this section.
"This section shall not be construed as conferring on the personnel of the Departments of the Army, Navy, or Air Force or the Federal Security Agency any authority to make criminal investigations, searches, seizures, or arrests of civilians charged with violations of this section."
10 U. S. C. § 141 (e):
"After first informing the Secretary of Defense, a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff may make such recommendations to Congress relating to the Department of Defense as he may consider appropriate."
APPENDIX II TO OPINION OF DOUGLAS, J., DISSENTING
Walter Lippmann gave the following account of his conversation with Churchill:
Our military added political departments to their staffs. A Deputy Chief of Naval Operations, Military Policy Division, was first established in the Department of the Navy by President Truman in 1945. In the Office of Secretary of Defense that was done by President Truman in 1947, the appointee eventually becoming Assistant Secretary for International Security Affairs. A like office was established in 1961 in the Department of the Army by President Kennedy and another for the Air Force in 1957 by President Eisenhower. Thus, when the Pentagon entered a Washington, D. C., conference, its four "Secretaries of State" faced the real Secretary of State and more frequently than not talked or stared him down. The Pentagon's "Secretaries of State" usually spoke in unison; they were clear and decisive with no ifs, ands, or buts, and in policy conferences usually carried the day.
By 1968 the Pentagon was spending $34 million a year on non-military social and behavioral science research both at home and abroad. One related to "witchcraft, sorcery, magic, and other psychological phenomena" in the Congo. Another concerned the "political influence of university students in Latin America." Other projects related to the skill of Korean women as divers, snake venoms in the Middle East, and the like. Research projects were going on for the Pentagon in 40 countries in sociology, psychology and behavioral sciences.
The Pentagon became so powerful that no President would dare crack down on it and try to regulate it.
The military approach to world affairs conditioned our thinking and our planning after World War II.
We did not realize that to millions of these people there was no difference between a Communist dictatorship
We talked about "saving democracy." But the real question in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America was whether democracy would ever be born.
We forgot that democracy in most lands is an empty word. We asked illiterate people living at the subsistence level to furnish staging grounds for a military operation whose outcome, in their eyes, had no relation to their own welfare. Those who rejected our overtures must be communists, we said. Those who did not approve our military plans must be secretly aligning with Russia, we thought.
So it was that in underdeveloped areas we became identified not with ideas of freedom, but with bombs, planes, and tanks. We thought less and less in terms of defeating communism with programs of political action, more and more in terms of defeating communism with military might. Our foreign aid mounted; but nearly 70% of it was military aid.
Our fears mounted as the cold war increased in intensity. These fears had many manifestations. The communist threat inside the country was magnified and exalted far beyond its realities. Irresponsible talk fanned the flames. Accusations were loosely made. Character assassinations were common. Suspicion took the place of goodwill. We needed to debate with impunity and explore to the edges of problems. We needed to search to the horizon for answers to perplexing problems. We needed confidence in each other. But in the
APPENDIX III TO OPINION OF DOUGLAS, J., DISSENTING
Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn, the noted Soviet author, made the following statement March 30, 1972, concerning surveillance of him and his family (reported in the Washington Post, Apr. 3, 1972):
"A kind of forbidden, contaminated zone has been created around my family, and to this day, there are people in Ryazan [where Solzhenitsyn used to live] who were dismissed from their jobs for having visited my house a few years ago. A corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences, T. Timofeyev, who is director of a Moscow institute, became so scared when he found out that a mathematician working under him was my wife that he dismissed her with unseemly haste, although this was just after she had given birth and contrary to all laws . . .
"It happens that an informant [for his new book on the history of prerevolutionary Russia] may meet with me. We work an hour or two and as soon as he leaves my house, he will be closely followed, as if he were a state criminal, and they will investigate his background, and then go on to find out who this man meets, and then, in turn, who that [next] person is meeting.
"Of course they cannot do this with everyone. The state security people have their schedule, and their own profound reasoning. On some days, there is no surveillance at all, or only superficial surveillance. On other days, they hang around, for example when Heinrich Boll
"And if you consider that they listen around the clock to telephone conversations and conversations in my home, they analyze recording tapes and all correspondence, and then collect and compare all these data in some vast premises—and these people are not underlings—you cannot but be amazed that so many idlers in the prime of life and strength, who could be better occupied with productive work for the benefit of the fatherland, are busy with my friends and me, and keep inventing enemies."
MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN, with whom MR. JUSTICE STEWART and MR. JUSTICE MARSHALL join, dissenting.
The Court of Appeals held that a justiciable controversy exists and that respondents have stated a claim upon which relief could be granted. 144 U. S. App. D. C. 72, 83, 444 F.2d 947, 958 (1971). I agree with Judge Wilkey, writing for the Court of Appeals, that this conclusion is compelled for the following reasons stated by him:
Respondents may or may not be able to prove the case they allege. But I agree with the Court of Appeals that they are entitled to try. I would therefore affirm the remand to the District Court for a trial and determination of the issues specified by the Court of Appeals.
FootNotes
The constitutionality of this statute is not at issue here; the specific authorization of such use of federal armed forces, in addition to state militia, appears to have been enacted pursuant to Art. IV, § 4, of the Constitution, which provides that "[t]he United States . . . shall protect each of [the individual States] . . . on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence."
In describing the requirement of 10 U. S. C. § 331 for the use of federal troops to quell domestic disorders, Attorney General Ramsey Clark made the following statements in a letter sent to all state governors on August 7, 1967:
"There are three basic prerequisites to the use of Federal troops in a state in the event of domestic violence:
"(1) That a situation of serious `domestic violence' exists within the state. While this conclusion should be supported with a statement of factual details to the extent feasible under the circumstances, there is no prescribed wording.
"(2) That such violence cannot be brought under control by the law enforcement resources available to the governor, including local and State police forces and the National Guard. The judgment required here is that there is a definite need for the assistance of Federal troops, taking into account the remaining time needed to move them into action at the scene of violence.
"(3) That the legislature or the governor requests the President to employ the armed forces to bring the violence under control. The element of request by the governor of a State is essential if the legislature cannot be convened. It may be difficult in the context of urban rioting, such as we have seen this summer, to convene the legislature.
"These three elements should be expressed in a written communication to the President, which of course may be a telegram, to support his issuance of a proclamation under 10 U. S. C. § 334 and commitment of troops to action. In case of extreme emergency, receipt of a written request will not be a prerequisite to Presidential action. However, since it takes several hours to alert and move Federal troops, the few minutes needed to write and dispatch a telegram are not likely to cause any delay.
"Upon receiving the request from a governor the President, under the terms of the statute and the historic practice, must exercise his own judgment as to whether Federal troops will be sent, and as to such questions as timing, size of the force, and federalization of the National Guard.
"Preliminary steps, such as alerting the troops, can be taken by the Federal government upon oral communications and prior to the governor's determination that the violence cannot be brought under control without the aid of Federal forces. Even such preliminary steps, however, represent a most serious departure from our traditions of local responsibility for law enforcement. They should not be requested until there is a substantial likelihood that the Federal forces will be needed."
This analysis of Attorney General Clark suggests the importance of the need for information to guide the intelligent use of military forces and to avoid "overkill."
"precisely the threat in this case that in some future civil disorder of some kind, the Army is going to come in with its list of troublemakers. . . and go rounding up people and putting them in military prisons somewhere." (Emphasis added.)
To this the court responded that "we still sit here with the writ of habeas corpus." At another point, counsel for respondents took a somewhat different approach in arguing that
"we're not quite sure exactly what they have in mind and that is precisely what causes the chill, the chilling effect." (Emphasis added.)
In deciding the case presently under review, the Court of Appeals distinguished Davis on the ground that the difference in the source of the chill in the two cases—a House Committee in Davis and the Army in the instant case—was controlling. We cannot agree that the jurisdictional question with which we are here concerned is to be resolved on the basis of the identity of the parties named as defendants in the complaint.
"No provision of this Act shall be so construed as to prevent a Secretary of a military department or a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from presenting to the Congress, on his own initiative, after first so informing the Secretary of Defense, any recommendation relating to the Department of Defense that he may deem proper." See H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 1142, 81st Cong., 1st Sess., 18. This provision is now codified as 10 U. S. C. § 141 (e).
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