Terminiello v. Chicago/Dissent Frankfurter

by Felix Frankfurter

United States Supreme Court

337 U.S. 1

Terminiello  v.  Chicago

 Argued: Feb. 1, 1949. --- Decided: May 16, 1949

Mr. Justice FRANKFURTER, dissenting.

For the first time in the course of the 130 years i which State prosecutions have come here for review, this Court is today reversing a sentence imposed by a State court on a ground that was urged neither here nor below and that was explicitly disclaimed on behalf of the petitioner at the bar of this Court.

The impropriety of that part of the charge which is now made the basis of reversal was not raised at the trial nor before the Appellate Court of Illinois. The fact that counsel for Terminiello wholly ignored it is emphasized by the objections that he did make in relation to other instructions given and not given. On appeal to the Supreme Court of Illinois, counsel still failed to claim as error that which this Court on its own motion now finds violative of the Constitution. It was not mentioned by the Illinois Supreme Court in its careful opinion disposing of other claims and it was not included in the elaborate petition for rehearing in that court. Thus an objection, not raised by counsel in the Illinois courts, not made the basis of the petition for certiorari here-not included in the 'questions presented,' nor in the 'reasons relied on for the allowance of the writ'-and explicitly disavowed at the bar of this Court, is used to upset a conviction which has been sustained by three courts of Illinois.

Reliance on Stromberg v. California, 283 U.S. 359, 51 S.Ct. 532, 75 L.Ed. 1117, 73 A.L.R. 1484, for what is done today is wholly misplaced. Neither expressly nor by implication has that decision any bearing upon the issue which the Court's opinion in this case raises, namely, whether it is open for this Court to reverse the highest court of a State on a point which was not brought before that court, did not enter into the judgment rendered by that court, and at no stage of the proceedings in this Court was invoked as error by the State court whose reversal is here sought. The Stromberg case presented precisely the opposite situation. In that case the claim which here prevailed was a ground of unconstitutionality urged before the California court; upon its rejection by that court it was made the basis of appeal to this Court; it was here urged as the decisive ground for the reversal of the California judgment.

The Stromberg case dealt with a statute which proscribed conduct in a threefold way. The information upon which a verdict of guilty was secured was couched in the threefold terms of the statute, and in that form submitted to the jury. A general verdict followed. It was urged throughout the proceedings, and finally at the bar of this Court, that one of the proscriptions of the statute was invalid under the Fourteenth Amendment. That view was sustained. All that the case holds is that where the validity of a statute is successfully assailed as to one of three clauses of a statute and all three clauses were submitted to the jury, the general verdict has an infirmity because it cannot be assumed that the jury convicted on the valid portions of the statute and not on the invalid. There was no question in that case of searching the record for an alleged error that at no time was urged against the State judgment brought here for review.

In the Stromberg case an error that was properly urged was sustained. In this case a claim that was not urged but was disavowed is transmuted into a claim denied.

Only the uninformed will deride as a merely technical point objection to what the Court is doing in this case. The matter touches the very basis of this Court's authority in reviewing the judgments of State courts. We have no authority to meddle with such a judgment unless some claim under the Constitution or the laws of the United States has been made before the State court whose judgment we are reviewing and unless the claim has been denied by that court. ^[1] How could there have been a denial of a federal claim by the Illinois courts, i.e., that the trial judge offended the Constitution of the United States in what he told the jury, when no such claim was made? The relation of the United States and the courts of the United States to the States and the courts of the States is a very delicate matter. It is too delicate to permit silence when a judgment of a State court is reversed in disregard of the duty of this Court to leave untouched an adjudication of a State unless that adjudication is based upon a claim of a federal right which the State has had an opportunity to meet and to recognize. If such a federal claim was neither before the State court nor presented to this Court, this Court unwarrantably strays from its province in looking through the record to find some federal claim that might have been brought to the attention of the State court and, if so, brought, fronted, and that might have been, but was not, urged here. This is a court of review, not a tribunal unbounded by rules. We do not sit like a kadi under a tree dispensing justice according to considerations of individual expediency.

Freedom of speech undoubtedly means freedom to express views that challenge deep-seated, sacred beliefs and to utter sentiments that may provoke resentment. But those indulging in such stuff as that to which this proceeding gave rise are hardly so deserving as to lead this Court to single them out as beneficiaries of the first departure from the restrictions that bind this Court in reviewing judgments of State courts. Especially odd is it to bestow such favor not for the sake of life or liberty, but to save a small amount of property-$100, the amount of the fine imposed upon the petitioner in a proceeding which is civil, not criminal, under the laws of Illinois, and thus subject only to limited review. City of Chicago v. Terminiello, 400 Ill. 23, 29, 79 N.E.2d 39, 43. This Court has recognized that fines of this nature are not within provisions of the Constitution governing federal criminal prosecutions. See Hepner v. United States, 213 U.S. 103, 29 S.Ct. 474, 53 L.Ed. 720, 27 L.R.A.,N.S., 739, 16 Ann.Cas. 960.

The importance of freedom of speech of course cannot be measured by dollars and cents. A great principle may be at stake, as in the Case of the Ship Money, though the issue arise over the payment of a few shillings' tax. Were the Court to sustain the claim urged throughout these proceedings, in Illinois and here, namely, that a law is unconstitutional when it forbids Terminiello's harangue in the circumstances of its utterance, it would be immaterial that only $100 is involved. But to inject an error into the record in order to avoid the issue on which the case was brought here-for certainly relief from the payment of a fine of $100 could not alone have induced this Court to excogitate a defect in the judgment which counsel thoughtfully rejected and which three State courts did not consider-hardly raises the objection to the dignity of such a principle. If the Court refrained from taking phrases out of their environment and finding in them a self-generated objection, it could not be deemed to have approved of them even § abstract propositions.

On the merits of the issue reached by the Court I share Mr. Justice JACKSON'S views. For I assume that the Court does not mean to reject, except merely for purposes of this case, the basic principle that guides scrutiny of a charge on appeal. I assume, that is, that a charge is not to be deemed a bit of abstraction in a non-existing world; the function which a charge serves is to give practical guidance to a jury in passing on the case that was unfolded before it-the particular circumstances in their particular setting.

Mr. Justice JACKSON and Mr. Justice BURTON join this dissent.

Notes

1  'Our power of review in this case is limited not only to the question whether a right guaranteed by the Federal Constitution was denied (Murdock v. City of Memphis, 20 Wall. 590, 22 L.Ed. 429; Haire v. Rice, 204 U.S. 291, 301, 27 S.Ct. 281, 51 L.Ed. 490), but to the particular claims duly made below, and denied (Seaboard Air Line Ry. v. Duvall, 225 U.S. 477, 485, 488, 32 S.Ct. 790, 56 L.Ed. 1171). We lack here the power occasionally exercised on review of judgments of lower federal courts to correct in criminal cases vital errors, although the objection was not taken in the trial court. Wiborg v. United States, 163 U.S. 632, 658, 660, 16 S.Ct. 1127, 1197, 41 L.Ed. 289; Clyatt v. United States, 197 U.S. 207, 221, 222, 25 S.Ct. 429, 49 L.Ed. 726. This is a writ of error to a state court. Because we may not inquire into the errors now alleged I concur in affirming the judgment of the state court.' Concurring opinion of Mr. Justice Brandeis joined by Mr. Justice Holmes in Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357, 380, 47 S.Ct. 641, 650, 71 L.Ed. 1095.