Dennis v. United States

341 U.S. 494 (1951)

Plurality Opinion by Chief Justice Vinson

Set against the backdrop of the Cold War and anti-communist crusades of Senator Joseph McCarthy and others, Dennis upheld a series of convictions of members of the Communist Party under the federal Smith Act. The defendants were charged with organizing a Communist Party, which advocated overthrowing the Government by force or violence. Although the convictions were affirmed over a free speech challenge, Chief Justice Vinson only garnered three additional votes for his opinion for the Court. Justices Frankfurter and Jackson concurred separately. Justice Clark did not participate in the decision. And Justices Black and Douglas dissented.

In his opinion, Vinson recognized that the Holmes-Brandeis rationale in Whitney and Gitlow had had more sway over the Court than the majorities in those cases. Yet he argued that the “situation with which Justices Holmes and Brandeis were concerned in Gitlow was a comparatively isolated event, bearing little relation in their minds to any substantial threat to the safety of the community. [They] were not confronted with any situation comparable to the instant one – the development of an apparatus designed and dedicated to the overthrow of the Government, in the context of world crisis after crisis.”

Vinson then went on the explicitly adopt the test put forth by Chief Judge Learned Hand from his opinion below.

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