opinion: SACHER v. UNITED STATES.
  No. 828.
  Decided May 19, 1958.
  Hubert T. Delany, Frank J. Donner and Teljord Taylor for petitioner.
  Solicitor General Rankin, Assistant Attorney General Tompkins, Philip R. Monahan and Doris H. Spangenburg for the United States.
  Per Curiam.
  The petition for writ of certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is granted. Charged in a three-count indictment for violation of R. S. § 102, as amended, 2 U. S. C. § 192, for failure to answer three questions put to him by a subcommittee of the Internal Security Subcommittee of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, the petitioner, having waived trial by jury, was found guilty on all counts and sentenced to six months’ imprisonment and to pay a fine of $1,000. After the sentence was sustained by the Court of Appeals, 99 U. S. App. D. C. 360, 240 F. 2d 46, this Court, having granted a petition for certiorari, remanded the case, 354 U. S. 930, to the Court of Appeals for reconsideration in light of Watkins v. United States, 354 U. S. 178. On reargument before the Court of Appeals sitting en banc, a divided court again affirmed the conviction. 102 U. S. App. D. C. 264, 252 F. 2d 828.
  The broad scope of authority vested in Congress to conduct investigations as an incident to the “legislative Powers” granted by the Constitution is not questioned. See Watkins v. United States, supra, at 215. But when Congress seeks to enforce its investigating authority through the criminal process administered by the federal judiciary, the safeguards of criminal justice become operative. The subject matter of inquiry before the subcommittee at which petitioner appeared as a witness concerned the recantation of prior testimony by a witness named Matusow. In the course of the hearing, the questioning of petitioner entered upon a “brief excursion,” 99 U. S. App. D. C. 360, 367, 240 F. 2d 46, 53, into proposed legislation barring Communists from practice at the federal bar, a subject not within the subcommittee’s scope of inquiry as authorized by its parent committee. Inasmuch as petitioner’s refusal to answer related to questions not clearly pertinent to the subject on which the two-member subcommittee conducting the hearing had been authorized to take testimony, the conditions necessary to sustain a conviction for deliberately refusing to answer questions pertinent to the authorized subject matter of a congressional hearing are wanting. Watkins v. United States, supra. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is therefore reversed and the cause remanded to the District Court with directions to dismiss the indictment.
  Reversed.
  Mr. Justice Burton took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
choices: First Amendment, miscellaneous (cf. comity: First Amendment) commercial speech, excluding attorneys libel, defamation: defamation of public officials and public and private persons libel, privacy: true and false light invasions of privacy legislative investigations: concerning internal security only federal or state internal security legislation: Smith, Internal Security, and related federal statutes loyalty oath or non-Communist affidavit (other than bar applicants, government employees, political party, or teacher) loyalty oath: bar applicants (cf. admission to bar, state or federal or U.S. Supreme Court) loyalty oath: government employees loyalty oath: political party loyalty oath: teachers security risks: denial of benefits or dismissal of employees for reasons other than failure to meet loyalty oath requirements conscientious objectors (cf. military draftee or military active duty) to military service campaign spending (cf. governmental corruption): protest demonstrations (other than as pertains to sit-in demonstrations): demonstrations and other forms of protest based on First Amendment guarantees free exercise of religion establishment of religion (other than as pertains to parochiaid:) parochiaid: government aid to religious schools, or religious requirements in public schools obscenity, state (cf. comity: privacy): including the regulation of sexually explicit material under the 21st Amendment obscenity, federal