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George Anastaplo: A Chicago Veterans Day Story

By Chuck Sudo in News on Nov 11, 2012 9:00PM

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George Anastaplo (Photo credit: View Minder)

I served in the Navy from 1988 through 1994. I’ve written before about my reasons for serving in the military and they weren’t for the more noble reasons the other military veteran of Chicagoist’s staff, Art Shay. There were no Nazi rats to fight and most of the men of Art’s generation didn’t have a choice. I sure as shit didn’t enlist for God and Country; my rationale was more selfish in nature.

As I get older, the insouciant punk I was back then—I received an honorable discharge but military bearing was never my strong suit—fades further into the distance and I reflect on my military service with a pride that grows every day and hope those who volunteer to become the front line of defense of the Constitution recognize that sooner than I. We ask every Veterans Day and Memorial Day that you thank a veteran, but we should be doing that every day. We should also be helping out those who served in their times of greatest need, instead of paying lip service to them twice a year.

I was digging around the Chicagoist Photos Flickr pool Friday for some Veterans Day inspiration and found it in the photo above. At the age of 17, George Anastaplo volunteered for the Army Air Corps in World War II, serving as a navigator on B-17 and B-29 bombers. After the war he earned his Bachelor’s degree in 1948, a law degree in 1951 and a PhD in 1964, all from the University of Chicago.

Yet it was in exercising his freedom of speech where Anastaplo’s story truly began. He had passed his bar exam and was preparing to interview with law firms around town when a routine interview with the Illinois Bar Association’s Committee on Character and Fitness set the stage for the rest of his life with a simple question and answer.

After a few harmless questions, one of the lawyers asked Anastaplo if a member of the Communist Party should be eligible to practice law in Illinois. Anastaplo was surprised. “I should think so,” he said. But didn’t Communists believe in overthrowing the government? the lawyer asked. In the long colloquy that followed, Anastaplo, invoking George Washington and American political tradition, insisted that the right to revolt was “one of the most fundamental rights any people have.” The committee members were unconvinced. Finally the second one asked, “Are you a member of the Communist Party?”

Although this question was much in the air in the 1950s—earlier that year in West Virginia, Senator Joe McCarthy had brandished a list of Communists he claimed had infiltrated the State Department—no one seriously thought that Anastaplo was a Communist. Nor did anyone doubt his intellect, character, or patriotism. “If the mothers in Carterville (Ill.) have their way, all their boys will be like George,” Fred K. Lingle, one of his high-school teachers, had told the committee in a written statement. And yet Anastaplo had determined that, as a matter of principle, the committee had no right to ask about his political beliefs or affiliations. “I think it is an illegitimate question,” he replied.

The Illinois Bar Association refused to admit Anastaplo based on his answer. Anastaplo argued in the courts, on his own behalf, his case to be admitted directly to the Bar, spending $5,000 of his own money in the process. He may have had an easier path to becoming a lawyer if he retained counsel. In a December 1982 profile of Anastaplo in Chicago magazine, former Ald. Leon Desperes recalled Anastaplo was adamant in representing himself.

Many judges who heard Anastaplo’s case and his many appeals said the issue would be moot if he only deigned to answer the question of whether he was a Communist. Anastaplo wrote of his doggedness, "There has always been the notion in my family that there were some things worth standing for." He took his case all the way to the Supreme Court, which agreed in 1960 to hear the case.

On April 24, 1961 the Court voted 5-4 against Anastaplo. Justice Hugo Black, who originally thought the case trivial, instead wrote in his dissent:

“The very most that can fairly be said against Anastaplo’s position in this entire matter is that he took too much of the responsibility of preserving [this country’s] freedom upon himself,” Black wrote. He compared Anastaplo to great lawyers like Clarence Darrow and then, taking measure of the nation’s ills, decried “the present trend, not only in the legal profession but in almost every walk of life” in which “too many men are being driven to become government-fearing and time-serving because the Government is being permitted to strike out at those who are fearless enough to think as they please and say what they think.” He concluded with an exhortation that still resonates: “We must not be afraid to be free.” Black liked this dissent so much that he had parts of it read at his funeral in 1971. When Brennan, who voted with Black, read it, he told him, “You’ve immortalized Anastaplo.”

Anastaplo petitioned the Court for a rehearing, which was denied. He then dropped his case, disappointed yet satisfied he had been able to allow the judicial system to bear it out. It would not be until November 1978 when the Committee on Character and Fitness would declare George Anastaplo met the characteristics to enter the Bar. In 1980 he began teaching constitutional law at Loyola University Chicago and went on to become a highly respected scholar on the subject.

This is why we serve.