TRIALS: Lesson in Law

When he was hauled before a House Un-American Activities subcommittee in 1949, Julius Emspak, secretary-treasurer of the Red-run United Electrical Workers Union, decided to teach the committee a little lesson. “I don’t think,” said Emspak, “a committee like this, or any subcommittee, has a right to go into . . . my beliefs [and] my associations . . .” He went on trumpeting: the committee was a “Kangaroo Court,” its members “corrupt,” its questions a “beautiful frame to hang people.”

The House charged him with contempt for refusing to answer its questions. But Emspak blandly explained that his surly accusations had merely been his way of invoking his constitutional rights against selfincrimination. Then he sat back to enjoy the committee’s discomfiture. Last week Julius Emspak discovered that he had doped it out all wrong. In Washington, a federal judge decided that he had not properly claimed his constitutional rights, gave him six months in jail and a $500 fine for contempt of Congress.