De Jonge v. Oregon

299 U.S. 353 (1937), argued 9 Dec. 1936, decided 4 Jan. 1937 by vote of 8 to 0; Hughes for the Court, Stone not participating. The Court overturned the conviction of Dirk DeJonge, who had been prosecuted under Oregon's criminal syndicalism law for helping to conduct a meeting in Portland organized by the Communist party to protest police shootings of striking longshoremen and raids on workers' homes and halls. Despite the party affiliations of DeJonge and the other organizers, no more than 15 percent of those at the meeting were Communists. One lecturer discussed the Young Communist League, and DeJonge tried to sell some party publications, but no one advocated criminal syndicalism or unlawful conduct, and the meeting was completely orderly. The principal evidence against DeJonge was party literature found elsewhere that tended to establish that the Communist party promoted criminal syndicalism. The Oregon Supreme Court held that a person could be convicted under the statute for doing nothing more than participating in a wholly innocent meeting called by the party. In reversing the Oregon court's decision, Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes declared, “[P]eaceable assembly for lawful discussion cannot be made a crime” (p. 365). The Oregon criminal syndicalism law had deprived DeJonge of the rights to free speech and peaceable assembly guaranteed by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

See also Assembly and Association, Citizenship, Freedom of; First Amendment; Speech and the Press.

— Michal R. Belknap

De Jonge v. Oregon
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued December 9, 1936 Decided January 4, 1937
Full case name	Dirk De Jonge v. State of Oregon
Citations	299 U.S. 353 (more)
Prior history	Appeal from the Supreme Court of the State of Oregon.
Holding
The Oregon statute as applied to the particular charge as defined by the state court is repugnant to the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The judgment of conviction is reversed and the cause is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
Court membership
Chief Justice Charles E. Hughes Associate Justices Willis Van Devanter · James C. McReynolds Louis Brandeis · George Sutherland Pierce Butler · Harlan F. Stone Owen J. Roberts · Benjamin N. Cardozo
Case opinions
Majority	Hughes, joined by unanimous
Stone took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.

De Jonge v. Oregon, 299 U.S. 353 (1937)^[1], was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause applies to freedom of assembly. The Court found that Dirk De Jonge had the right to organize a Communist Party and to speak at its meetings, even though the party advocated industrial or political change in revolution. However, in the 1950s with the fear of communism on the rise the Court ruled in Dennis v. United States (1951) that Eugene Dennis, who was the leader of the Communist Party, violated the Smith Act by advocating the forcible overthrow of the United States government.

See also

• List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 299
• Whitney v. California, 271 U.S. 583 (1927)
• Dennis v. United States, 341 U.S. 494 (1951)

Further reading

• Chafee, Zechariah (1941). Free Speech in the United States. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. pp. 384–388. 
• Friendly, Fred; Elliott, Martha (1984). "Protecting ‘The Thought We Hate’". The Constitution: That Delicate Balance. New York: Random House. pp. 68–88. ISBN 0394540743. 

External links

• ^ 299 U.S. 353 Full text of the opinion courtesy of Findlaw.com.
• First Amendment Library entry on DeJonge v. Oregon
• http://www.oyez.org/cases/1901-1939/1936/1936_123

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