they should. All of a sudden, overnight, it has turned the other way. They now want to make the Constitution more restrictive. I do not recall anything that the Senate has done to warrant a movement to take its authority away from it. I think it has exercised it well over the whole period. Senator DIRKSEN. But I think you will agree, and I think everybody will agree, that the United Nations Charter had very considerable discussion from the time they convened in San Francisco until it was deposited in the archives of the State Department on the 4th of July 1945. Yet notwithstanding all that discussion, no escape clause was ever written into the United Nations Charter. You will agree with that, will you not? Mr. PERLMAN. What do you mean by an escape clause? Senator DIRKSEN. I mean a way to get out. You would think normally when you are dealing with the matter of this kind that somebody would raise the question, and I guess it was raised according to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee report, if you get in and you do not want to stay in, how do you get out? But I defy anybody to find any way in this charter to get out, by joint resolution which of course might be vetoed and then of course it takes two-thirds of both Houses to get it out. Mr. PERLMAN. I think the Congress of the United States can repudiate its membership. Senator DIRKSEN. I am raising a very practical question. Future Senates may not be endowed with wisdom of the present Senate. We have to have that in mind. Secondly, with respect to that point, you are very familiar with section 7, article 2, chapter 1, the essential clause: Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the members to submit such matters to settlement under the present Charter. Who makes the determination? That does not say. I have looked through this thing night after night. I find nothing there that says who is going to determine what is essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of the country. Does the General Assembly do it? Does one of the specialized commissions do it? Does one of the second echelon agencies do it? Does the Security Council do it? Mr. PERLMAN. We have a delegation there that would take the position in the first instance. If they undertook to submit anything, if they did undertake to submit something that was prohibited by that provision, certainly the two-thirds of the Senate would not ratify any such thing. Senator DIRKSEN. But they ratified this. Senator WATKINS. Our representatives have been sitting in these councils and these groups that have been forming these proposed treaties. They have been doing it all along, they have been parties to it. The CHAIRMAN. They have a big propaganda machine costing millions of dollars. Mr. PERLMAN. Let me say one more thing, because I would like to comment upon some statements made by the Senator from my own State. He was discussing the Fujii case. It is true that a court, I believe it is called the court of intermediate appeal in California, did undertake to invalidate an act of California on the ground that it was prohibited by the Charter of the United Nations. Senator BUTLER. Two acts. Mr. PERLMAN. I think there were two acts involved. Senator BUTLER. Mixed marriages and ownership of property. Mr. PERLMAN. Those cases were appealed to the Court of Appeals of California and those decisions were reversed. They are not the law even in California or anywhere else. Senator BUTLER. I thought I made it clear it leaves the law of California completely up in the air. Mr. PERLMAN. No. You said one court decided it one way and the other court decided it another way. But the highest court reversed the lower court and therefore the original decision has been wiped out. Mr. HOLMAN. That applied to the charter. In their majority opinion they wrote about the Charter of the United Nations. They said it was a moral as well as a legal commitment which the court should not lightly overload. With that in their mind, they put the decision on the 14th amendment. Mr. PERLMAN. Yes; they reversed the lower court. I might say to the committee that when that decision was handed down, the first decision, the State Department was in touch with the Justice Department about it. Both the State Department and the Justice Department agreed that that decision was in error, and the question that we debated was whether we should intervene in the court of appeals-I think it is the Supreme Appellate Court, they call it, of California, the highest court-and we decided that we would not intervene at that point because we did not want to be charged with having the Federal Government interfere frequently in State matters. We thought that we would wait until the Supreme Court of California had passed on the question, and if that court happened to affirm what we thought was an erroneous decision, that we would then ask the Supreme Court of the United States to issue a writ of certorari in order to review it. It never became necessary because the court of appeals reversed it. Senator BUTLER. Isn't it true last June in the State of Idaho, didn't they invoke the Charter of the United Nations when they had a witness on the stand and refused to let the witness answer the question of whether or not the husband or the wife of the witness was a nonresident alien, because to have done so would have been a violation of the Charter. That was just last June of 1952. That thing has saturated the whole domestic jurisdiction of our States. Mr. PERLMAN. Nobody can foretell what some judge might rule in a particular case, no matter what the laws are. That is the reason there are appellate courts. Senator BUTLER. Do you have any idea what happened in that case? Mr. PERLMAN. I do not recall. Senator WATKINS. Is it not a fact that because the Supreme Court judges, some of them, took the stand they did and the stand you are now taking, these other courts have taken, it has really rung the alarm over the country as to what may happen? All you need is the change of a few more judges and you will get it just the way you people are contending. It seems to me we certainly have every justification for moving in this direction now. Mr. PERLMAN. I do not know what you mean by that, Senator. You say the way we are contending. Here I am just contending that we leave the Constitution the way it is. We are for it. I am asking you to let it alone. Senator WATKINS. If we debated the Constitution, we would not have any argument. They argue it one way and do the opposite. We want to make it so clear there will not be any doubt about it. Mr. SMITHEY. Mr. Perlman, are you in agreement with the position of the State Department that there is no longer any real distinction between domestic and foreign affairs as set forth in the State Department Publication 2972, Foreign Affairs Policy Service 26, released September 1950, with a foreword by President Truman? Mr. PERLMAN. I do not recall that. Mr. SMITHEY. Are you in agreement with it? Mr. PERLMAN. I would not pass on any declaration unless I read the whole thing. I don't know in what context it appears. Mr. HOLMAN. While Mr. Perlman is here, if I may, in order to clear up the position of the American Bar Association, I would like to put into the record at this time a roster of the members of the house of delegates which I have just taken from our official red book for this year. (The material referred to follows:) Members of the House of Delegates as of Jan. 12, 1953 William Logan Martin, 600 North 18th St., Birming- State delegate... ham 3. Howard J. Finn, 111 Sutter St., San Francisco 4. Archibald M. Mull, Jr., Anglo Bank Bldg., Sacra- Gurney E. Newlin, Edison Bldg., Los Angeles 13... Loyd Wright, 111 West 7th St., Los Angeles 14. Colorado: Thomas M. Burgess, Mining Exchange Bldg., Colorado Springs. James A. Woods, First National Bank Bldg., Den ver 2. Connecticut: Cyril Coleman, 750 Main St., Hartford 3. Charles M. Lyman, 129 Church St., New Haven 8.- Thomas Cooch, Delaware Trust Bldg., Wilmington. State bar of Arizona.... State delegate..... Bar Association of Arkansas. Former president, American 1954 Members of the House of Delegates as of Jan. 12, 1953-Continued Name of delegate Representative capacity Term expires District of Columbia: Walter M. Bastian, U. S. District Court for District of Columbia, Washington 1. Charles H. Burton, Munsey Bldg., Washington 4... Austin F. Canfield, Woodward Bldg., Washington 5. Henry P. Chandler, U. S. Supreme Court Bldg., Washington 13. Frank J. Delany, 1029 Vermont Ave. NW., Washington 5. Francis W. Hill, Jr., Tower Bldg., Washington 5-.- H. Cecil Kilpatrick, American Security Bldg., Washington 5. Bolitha J. Laws, U. S. District Court for District of Columbia, Washington 1. James P. McGranery, Department of Justice, Washington 25. George M. Morris, American Security Bldg., Washington 5. Godfrey L. Munter, Shoreham Bldg., Washington 5. Charles S. Rhyne, 730 Jackson Pl. NW., Washington 6. James J. Robinson, 100 Maryland Ave. NE., Washington 2. Arthur W. Scharfeld, National Press Bldg., Washington 4. Ashley Sellers, 1625 I St. NW., Washington 6... (Vacancy).. Florida: E. Dixie Beggs, Blount Bldg., Pensacola. Darrey A. Davis, 605 Lincoln Rd., Miami Beach 39. J. Lance. Lazonby, Box 123, Gainesville.. E. Smythe Gambrell, Citizens & Southern National John M. Slaton, At.anta Federal Savings Bldg., William A. Sutherland, First National Bank Bldg., Hawaii: Members of the House of Delegates as of Jan. 12, 1953—Continued Frank W. Grinnell, 60 State St., Boston 9. Franklin J. Marryott, 175 Berkeley St., Boston 17... Thomas H. Adams, Penobscot Building, Detroit 26. Fred Roland Allaben, Federal Square Building, George E. Brand, Cadillac Tower, Detroit 26. Harry G. Gault, Genesee Bank Building, Flint 3 Mary H. Zimmerman, United Artists Building, Richmond C. Coburn, Ambassador Building, St. James M. Douglas, 705 Olive St., St. Louis 1. Paul W. Lashly, 812 Olive St., St. Louis 1.. Walter A. Raymond, Dierks Building, Kansas John Ritchie, Washington University Law School, St. Louis 5. National Association of Women Lawyers. 1953 Minnesota State Bar Association.. 1954 State delegate. 1955 Minnesota State Bar Association 1954 State delegate 1954 Mississippi State bar. 1954 |