1946 June 3

Withholding Federal Salaries an Unconstitutional Bill of Attainder

 

The Supreme Court on this day in United States v. Lovett ordered Congress to pay the salaries of Robert M. Lovett and two of his colleagues on the grounds that the law withholding their salaries violated the constitutional protection against a Bill of Attainder.

A Bill of Attainder is a law that singles out a particular person or family for punishments. The prohibition against Bills of Attainder was placed in the Constitution (Article I, Section 9) because it had been a common practice in England before the American Revolution.

Lovett, Goodwin B. Watson, and William E. Dodd, Jr. had been denied their government salaries in 1943 by an act of Congress, after they had been named as “subversive” federal emloyees by Attorney General Francis Biddle. Congressman Martin Dies then entered Biddle’s list of alleged subversives into the Congressional Record, and Congress specifically denied them their government salaries in a budget bill. Lovett and his colleagues were the only two employees on the list who were still on the federal payroll at that time, and they decided the challenge their loss of pay.

Lovett was a widely published Professor of English at Harvard University and the University of Chicago and also a political activist on civil liberties issues. See below for a link  to his many publications.

Justice Hugo Black for the Court: “Those who wrote our Constitution well knew the danger inherent in special legislative acts which take away the life, liberty, or property of particular named persons because the legislature thinks them guilty of conduct which deserves punishment. They intended to safeguard the people of this country from punishment without trial by duly constituted courts.”

Article 1, Section 9, Paragraph 3 of the Constitution“No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law will be passed.”

Learn about the relevance of Bills of Attainder today here

See Lovett’s many publications here

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