YOUR

YOUR

CONGRESSMAN

REPORTS

By Rep. Burr P. Harrison

The House of Representatives was occupied this week with furtheir consideration of President Eisenhower’s civil rights bill. As Jn the past, proponents of the legislation have insisted that it is a “mijd” bill, and that they see no treason why Congress should not he willing to give Attorney General Brownell this authority to take charge of so-called civil rights cases anywhere in the L nited States.

There are those of us, on the other hand, who remain convinced that the bill is a vicious measure which would do violence to legal safeguards American citizens have cherished since the founding of the republic. In other words, we maintain that the bill will do much m<ye to imperil genuine civil rights than to safeguard them.

It is an unnerving and unreal to sit in the Capitol and hear members of Congress arguing against the principle of trial by jury, but\ that is what has been happening. Sponsors of the civil rights bill have been contending that trial by jury has no place in it—that the whole idea is to speed up civil rights prosecutions, and guarantees of iury trials merely would slow and hamper the proceedings. Mr. Eisenhower’s civil rights bill gives the citizen taken into a Federal court for allegedly interfering with—or “being about to” interfere with—another’s civil rights no trial by jury. Instead, it substitutes for the jury the very judge who issued the warrant against the citizen.

In virtually even,' line of the civil rights bill is to be found evidence of the apparent irritation and impatience of its writers with dnr process of law. For example, the legislation would place the liberty of a citizezn in jeopardy without presentment to a grand jury of the charges against the citizen and cans- >-:rn to answer to an accusation- • * criminal activity on the bns;< nf an affidavit of any other citizen.

The bill likewise deprives the accused of Constitutional due process bv denying him the right to be told in an indictment the nature and cause of the accusation and substituting for the indictment the bench warrant of a federal judge, which merely informs the citizen that he is accused of violating an injunction—or order— of the court. There is created for the citizen, therefore, the distinct possibility that he could come into court prepared to defend himself as to one incident, only to find that ,.he is being prosecuted for some