Pressure Groups and the Courts

The role of the American courts in the determination of public policy brings them within the range of agencies with which, under some circumstances, pressure organizations must concern themselves. The records of presidential appointees to the Supreme Court undergo a searching scrutiny by pressure organizations, which are quick to oppose the confirmation of individuals thought to be biased against group interests. Given the customs of judicial action it is not good form to attempt to pressure judges. Yet interest groups often play an active role in litigation to test the constitutionality of legislation; the existence of an organization incidentally permits a sharing of the costs of such cases. Beyond the realm of constitutional questions, in some areas the reality of law is fixed not so much by the initiative of public authority as by the vigor of private litigation to maintain rights. The activities of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People present perhaps the most conspicuous instance of group endeavor over a long period to mold the law in its effects on a group of citizens. Other organizations, too, appear as friends of the court in Supreme Court cases. Their participation has, as Professor Vose says, "often given litigation the distinct flavor of group combat."

Intergroup Lobbying

Officials are not the sole recipients of the attentions of lobbyists. Lobbyists also lobby each other. Any proponent of action, or inaction, must take into account private as well as public centers of power able to obstruct or to help the cause. With potential friends and potential foes, a group's relations naturally differ. In many instances a group's objectives will run diametrically counter to those of some other group or constellation of groups. Such groups can only fight it out to a stalemate or to a compromise imposed by public authority. At times, however, opposition may be foreseen and coped with in advance. Modifications of a legislative proposal may remove its sting for groups with only a tangential interest in it or a concern about some incidental feature.

Group spokesmen lobby among potential friends for support. They often attempt to obtain endorsements from other groups with a secondary interest in a proposal. For example, in 1951 the marine committee of the Veterans of Foreign Wars adopted a resolution criticizing the State Department for directing its personnel to fly rather than travel by sea and thereby be bound by a statute requiring them to travel by American-flag vessels. It turned out that a member of the VFW marine committee was also the vice president of a shippers' association. All of which suggests parenthetical mention of the general practice of interests sharply affected by public policy of "boring from within" all opinion-forming groups to which they can obtain access. Intergroup lobbying sometimes verges on coercion. Some associations regard it as sound strategy not to prejudice their main cause by involving themselves in side issues.

Intergroup lobbying may be not a matter of winning reluctant allies but of bringing together groups with similar interests in a piece of legislation. The promotion of important legislative proposals often involves the formation of a committee to lead the efforts of a large number of groups with a common concern. Dr. Riggs points to the importance of such "catalytic groups," as he labels them, which exist either on an ad hoc or permanent basis. His study of the Citizens Committee to Repeal Chinese Exclusion indicates that this committee pulled together the efforts of a large number of organizations and that most of the witnesses who appeared before the congressional committee in support of repeal did so at the request of the Citizens Committee, which itself went unmentioned in the committee hearings. Similarly, the Association of American Railroads, the National Coal Association, the United Mine Workers, and other groups formed the National St. Lawrence Project Conference to unify the efforts of those opposed to the St. Lawrence Seaway.