TWENTY-THREE OF FIFTY ONE DISAGREE

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

We desire to take issue with the CRIMSON editorial "Immunizing the Lubells," which, from its content, might have been better titled "Immunizing the Legal Would from Subversion by the Lubells.

Since our brethren of the Harvard Law Review gave no reasons for their failure to elect Jonathan Lubell to membership, although he qualified academically, we choose to draw no inferences from their action. Perhaps they considered as indicative of bad character the invocation of the privilege against self-incrimination by one who plans to become an officer of the courts. To that view, apparently not considered by the CRIMSON, some of us might subscribe.

In any event, we can accord the CRIMSON no such immunity for its illogical and irresponsible stand, which is premised on the assumption that Mr. Lubell is a Communist ("... he had need for the privilege against self-incrimination").

Even assuming Mr. Lubell were a Communist (which is not, in itself, illegal), we agree with the CRIMSON that "a suspected Communist or even a proven Communist should be able to study law at an American law school" That, essentially, was the position taken by the Harvard Law School when it refused to expel the Lubells. But we cannot subscribe to the CRIMSON's anomalous conception of the Harvard Law Review as at the same time a one-way ticket to Wall Street and a field ripe for sowing the seeds of subversion, from which Mr. Lubell and his ilk must be excluded.

What the CRIMSON fails to realize is that the law review is an integral part of a legal education. True, membership is restricted, but necessarily so because of exacting standards of accuracy and quality and because of the rigors of the editorial process. It is in a sense an advanced course open, almost without exception, to those who meet a high academic standard and are willing to risk ulcers and little sleep. It is a privilege which can be revoked for failure to do competent work. Unfortunately, either the CRIMSON has missed the primary educational purpose of law review work (by relegating it to the role of a by-product of legal education, which may be a correct denomination for the final printed page), or it views the opportunity as an educational experience to be restricted to those disparagingly labeled "the safe" by Harvard's President, Doctor Pusey.

Perhaps the deprivation would be justifiable if the Harvard Law Review could become a vehicle for Marxist manifestos by Mr. Lubell, From those who have looked inside the covers of law school journals, they very thought will evoke snickers. From those who have undergone the sentence-by-sentence and world-by-word dissection of their writing that is the editorial process of the reviews, it will evoke belly-laughs. The nature of the subject matter and the form of analysis do not easily lend themselves as sounding boards for Marxist propaganda. And perversion of cases and legal doctrine could scarcely withstand the careful scrutiny of the editorial purgatory. Furthermore, it would seem to us that a truly Marxist approach would require challenges to Angle-American jurisprudence that would be painfully obvious. Were such anathema to evade the editors, it would scarcely pass unnoticed by the august subscribers of the Harvard Law Review. Lawyers and law students have, after all, outgrown the diaper stage in their intellectual development.

But behind the too facile reasoning of the CRIMSON editorial a vital human issue lies obscured. Mr. Lubell is, after all, a human being, and just at the threshold of his professional career. Since he has been allowed to remain in the law school, he should not be relegated to a sort of second-class law-studentship, surely not for the reasons advanced by the CRIMSON. The full scope of legal educational opportunities open to those of like intellectual caliber should also be his in order that he may have full chance to demonstrate his professional competence and to gain whatever advantages flow therefrom.

Although the undersigned are members of the Board of the Yale Law Journal, they are expressing their personal views.

William Baronoff, Richard K. Berg, Murry Biochin, Jerome A. Cohen, Russell C. Dilks, S. Gordon Elkins, Kiaus Eppier, Joseph M. Field, Alan Gladstone, Howard A. Gilckstein, Anne Gross, Alexander P. Hoffmann, Robert L. Lasky, N. A. Levin, Stuart M. Paley, Alvin H. Schulman, Genne R. Sliver, Daniel M. Singer, Gorden B. Spivacak, David R. Tillinghast, Gerald Walpin, George C. Zachary.