Each of us is a member of an organized society. Each of us benefits from its existence and its order. And each of us must be ready, like Socrates, to accept the verdict of its institutions if we violate their mandate and our challenge is not vindicated.
IN a sense, Abe Fortas prejudged himself last year in that characteristically pithy statement on civil disobedience.
Last week, having violated society's mandate, Fortas reluctantly accepted its verdict by resigning from the U.S. Supreme Court. He thus became the only man in the history of the Republic to be forced from the high bench.
Fortas really had little choice: he had either to resign or to face almost certain impeachment by the House of Representatives. Though he attempted to dismiss his financial dealings with the Wolfson Family Foundation as routine and blameless, the pressure from both Congress and the Nixon Administration became severe and finally intolerable. Fortas decided to resign, he said, as soon as he realized that the furor surrounding him—and the court—could not otherwise subside. "Hell," he said piously, "I feel there wasn't any choice for a man of conscience."
Terse Exchange. "There has been no wrongdoing on my part," he insisted in a written explanation to Chief Justice Earl Warren. "There has been no default in the performance of my judicial duties in accordance with the high standards of the office I hold." He sent a copy to President Nixon, along with a two-sentence letter of resignation. The reply from the White House, which clearly welcomed just such an outcome, was equally terse: "I have received your letter of resignation," wrote Nixon, "and I accept it, effective as of its date."
Neither message more than hinted at the tension that had hung over the Capital for eleven days. The relief in Washington was audible. New York's Representative Emanuel Celler, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, which would have initiated impeachment, said that he felt "like a woman who has just been delivered of a baby." While the possibility of continued investigation remained, Celler, like many others in Washington, wanted to see the case closed. He called the Fortas case "a Greek tragedy"—and again many in the Capital agreed.