ABA Panel Calls Flag Proposals Irresponsible

A prestigious American Bar Assn. committee that includes former Nixon and Carter Administration officials concluded in blunt language today that efforts to enact either a constitutional amendment or a bill to outlaw flag desecration are unneeded and irresponsible.

In a 16-page report to the ABA, meeting in Hawaii, the committee said the nation’s commitment to freedom of expression will be damaged by any attempt to reverse a Supreme Court ruling that Americans have a right to burn the flag as a political protest.

“All through human history, tyrannies have tried to enforce obedience by prohibiting disrespect for the symbols of their power,” the task force said. “The American flag commands respect and love because of our country’s adherence to its values and its promise of freedom, not because of fiat and criminal law.”

Headed by former Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Randolph Thrower, an appointee of then-President Richard M. Nixon, the panel will ask the ABA’s policy-making House of Delegates to endorse its report next week during a convention in Honolulu.

The committee said that because Congress appears to be rushing toward some action, the ABA should go on record opposing either legislation or a constitutional amendment to reverse the ruling.

Lawyers have “a special obligation to defend the Constitution and its cardinal principles,” the task force said.

“We agree that the burning of the American flag as a form of political protest is very offensive to the vast majority of our citizens,” the panel said. But, “it is just when people take great offense because of disrespect shown to an honored symbol that the right of free expression needs protection, not prosecution.”

The Bush Administration and leading Republicans in Congress support a constitutional amendment that would permit states to outlaw flag desecration. Democratic leaders in Congress are sponsoring legislation to make flag desecration a crime.

The high court on June 21 ruled that Texas improperly prosecuted a man who burned the flag at a protest during the Republican National Convention in Dallas in 1984. The ruling apparently invalidated flag desecration laws of 48 states and the federal government.

Other members of the ABA task force are Barbara Black, dean of Columbia University Law School; Warren Christopher, deputy secretary of state under Jimmy Carter; Erwin Griswold, former dean of Harvard Law School and solicitor general in the Nixon Administration; Prof. Gerald Gunther of Stanford University Law School; Robert McKay, former dean of New York University Law School; Earl Silbert, a U.S. attorney appointed by Nixon, and Cyrus Vance, secretary of state under Carter.