The CPUSA is useless anyway. More on reddit.com

The Communist Control Act of 1954 was designed to protect America from communism. Among other things - it made membership in the communist party illegal. An Arizona judge ruled it was unconstitut... More on law.stackexchange.com

R2: so this is one of those situations where the person describes a legal setting that is technically correct, but draws a bass-ackwards conclusion from it. Let's get this low-hanging fruit out of the way first: the supreme court is a federal court. There, I said it. Now, on to the meat of this. The Communist Control Act was passed by Eisenhower, and pretty much immediately, it was derided for the assault on the First Amendment that it plainly was. Not surprisingly, it was not enforced. Then, in 1973, a case before an Arizona District Court challenged a set of Arizona laws that mirrored the federal Communist Control Act: The Arizona statutes challenged, Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. §§ 16-205, 16-206 (Supp. 1972-73), are part of the Arizona Communist Control Act, ch. 108, [1961] Ariz. Sess. Laws 220, a portion of which has been held unconstitutional. Elfbrandt v. Russell, 384 U.S. 11, 86 S. Ct. 1238, 16 L. Ed. 2d 321 (1966), rev'g 94 Ariz. 1, 381 P. 2d 554 (1963), noted, 5 Ariz. L. Rev. 254 (1964). Subsection 16-205(B) of the Arizona Act is drawn verbatim from 50 U.S.C. § 841 (1970); other subsections are drawn from other congressional acts, or are newly written. Section 16-206 of the Arizona Act is an almost verbatim adoption of 50 U.S.C. § 842 (1970)(outlawing Communist Party) which in turn is part of a federal series of enactments aimed at suppression of communist political organizations. Communist Control Act of 1954, ch. 886, 68 Stat. 775 (codified at 50 U.S.C. §§ 841-844 and amending other sections of Title 50) Blawis v. Bolin, 358 F. Supp. 349, 352, 1973 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 13719, *6 In the case, the Court invited the DOJ to submit an amicus brief, which it did. The court noted: A reading of [the DOJ amicus] brief leaves one with the unavoidable conclusion that the Department of Justice, itself, entertains serious doubts on a number of grounds as to the constitutionality of section 3 of the Federal Communist Control Act of 1954 if applied as in this case. Ultimately, the court found: " Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. §§ 16-205 , 16-206 (Supp. 1972-73), and 50 U.S.C. §§ 841-842 (1970) , are unconstitutional on their face and as applied." So that brings us to bad law OP. This person was told, by another redditor, that the Communist Control Act was ruled unconstitutional. Apparently this was news to the bad law OP, because he then ran to wikipedia and saw the following sentence in the first paragraph: The Act has since been ruled unconstitutional in federal court but has not been ruled on in the Supreme Court and has never been enforced. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Control_Act_of_1954 He then regurgitated a less nuanced version of that sentence: [it was ruled unconstitutional] by a federal court, but not the supreme court. It can be ruled constitutional by them if brought to the supreme Court [sic] Could the Supreme Court decide that the law is constitutional? In theory, sure. The court can determine whatever it wants is constitutional. But that's not what bad law OP really means to convey. He really means to convey that, effectively, the jury is out on whether the law is constitutional. By now it should be obvious: the jury is not out. In my quick research, I have found not one example of an administration attempting to enforce the law. The DOJ will not even voice serious support of the law. The amicus brief it submitted above was the exact same one it submitted in an earlier case, because it apparently felt it wasn't worth writing a new one. And that brief was an attempt by the DOJ to claim that it felt the law was inapplicable. In essence: its as a cop-out by DOJ to not have to explain why it was just ignoring the law. The law is, in essence, a piece of relic'd propaganda. It would never serve any purpose and never will serve any purpose. So if you ever feel that what we do, in our profession, is easy (and sometimes it does appear to be), just remember this: apparently it is very difficult to look at the legal posture of a law and draw a sensible conclusion as to its place in America jurisprudence. As with all my posts here, I always welcome criticism or feedback on anything I've presented. I am not a constitutional litigator. More on reddit.com

Of course not. More on reddit.com