Page 31
and three other dissenting justices saw no relevant dif-
ference between the aims of union violence and those of
Klan violence.
Whatever the merits of those arguments, the Court was
no more willing to apply civil rights law to the problem
of union violence than it has been to apply the Hobbs Act.
The majority reasoned this way: "The National Labor
Relations Act . . . addresses in great detail the rela-
tionship between employer, employee and union in a great
variety of situations, and it would be an unsettling event
to rule that strike and picket-line violence must now be
considered in light of the strictures of § 1985(3)."105
Thus has the Court declined to hold union officials
accountable for strike violence. That puts the matter
squarely in the hands of Congress. "Unsettling" or not,
the victims of strike and picket-line violence demand and
deserve accountability.
Conclusion
"Public policy concerning labor unions has, in little
more than a century, moved from one extreme to the other,"
wrote Friedrich A. Hayek in 1960. "From a state in which
little the unions could do was legal"106 at the turn of the
19th century, we now have precisely the opposite perspec-
tive at the turn of the 20th.
[T]hat it is legitimate for unions to try to
secure higher wages has been interpreted to mean
that they must be allowed to do whatever seems
necessary to succeed in their effort. In par-
ticular, because striking has been accepted as a
legitimate weapon of unions, it has come to be
believed that they must be allowed to do whatev-
er seems necessary to make a strike successful.107
In 1907, Clarence Darrow cleverly exploited that sen-
timent in Caldwell, Idaho. In that case, the injustice
was to acquit three union officials. Today, however, the
Supreme Court has solemnized the Idaho debacle as judicial
precedent. As a result, thousands of acts of union vio-
lence have gone unpunished. Legislation such as FUVA may
be the only way of reining in the Court's excessive defer-
ence to "legitimate" union objectives.