Jersey City
Jersey City is the second-most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey, after Newark.New Jersey, MayorFrank Hague had in 1937 used a city
ordinance
Ordinance may refer to:
Law
* Ordinance (Belgium), a law adopted by the Brussels Parliament or the Common Community Commission
* Ordinance (India), a temporary law promulgated by the President of India on recommendation of the Union Cabinet
* ...
to prevent labor meetings in public places and stop the distribution of literature pertaining to the Committee for Industrial Organization's cause. He referred to the CIO as "
communist
Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...
."
Judgment
District and circuit courts ruled in favor of the CIO, which brought the suit against the mayor for these actions and which was represented by
Morris L. Ernst
Morris Ernst (August 23, 1888 – May 21, 1976) was an American lawyer and prominent attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). In public life, he defended and asserted the rights of Americans to privacy and freedom from censorshi ...
Lee Pressman
Lee Pressman (July 1, 1906 – November 20, 1969) was a labor attorney and earlier a US government functionary, publicly alleged in 1948 to have been a spy for Soviet intelligence during the mid-1930s (as a member of the Ware Group), following hi ...
and
Benjamin Kaplan
Benjamin Kaplan (April 11, 1911 – August 18, 2010) was an American copyright and procedure scholar and jurist. He was also notable as "one of the principal architects"David Childs ''The Independent'', September 10, 2010. of the Nuremberg trials ...
. Hague appealed to the
Supreme Court
A supreme court is the highest court within the hierarchy of courts in most legal jurisdictions. Other descriptions for such courts include court of last resort, apex court, and high (or final) court of appeal. Broadly speaking, the decisions of ...
which ruled against him and held that Hague's ban on political meetings violated the First Amendment right to freedom of assembly, and so the ordinances were void.
List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 307
This is a list of cases reported in volume 307 of ''United States Reports'', decided by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1939.
Justices of the Supreme Court at the time of volume 307 U.S.
The Supreme Court is established by A ...