353 U.S. 232 (1957)
In December 1953, Rudolph Schware filed an application with the New Mexico Board of Bar Examiners to take the bar examination scheduled for February 1954, on the eve of his graduation from the University of New Mexico School of Law.1 His application, submitted on the Board's prescribed form, disclosed in detail that he had used aliases, including Rudolph Di Caprio, between 1933 and 1937 and had been arrested on several occasions prior to 1940.2
The Board informed Schware he could not take the examination.3 After he requested a formal hearing, the Board granted the request and at the hearing provided him for the first time with minutes of its meeting stating the denial was based on his use of aliases, former connection with subversive organizations, and record of arrests.4 At the hearing Schware called his wife, the rabbi of his synagogue, a local attorney, and the secretary to the dean of the law school to testify about his character.5 He testified himself under oath.6 His counsel introduced letters he had written his wife from 1944 through 1946 while in the Army, letters from every member of his law school graduating class except one, and statements from all available law school professors.7 The Board called no witnesses and introduced no evidence.8
Schware was born in 1914 in a poor section of New York City.9 In 1932, at age eighteen and in his final year of high school, he joined the Young Communist League and later the Communist Party, remaining a member until 1940.10 From the time he left school until 1940 Schware worked at temporary and ill-paying jobs.11 He participated in efforts to unionize employees.12 In 1933 at a glove factory and in 1934 on the California docks he used the alias Rudolph Di Caprio to avoid anti-Jewish discrimination in employment and organizing.13 In 1934, while participating in maritime strikes in San Pedro, California, he was arrested at least twice on suspicion of criminal syndicalism, held briefly, and released without formal charges or trial.14
At the time of his father's death in 1937 Schware left the Communist Party but later rejoined.15 In 1940 he was arrested and indicted for violating the Neutrality Act of 1917.16 He was charged with attempting to induce men to volunteer for duty on the side of the Loyalist Government in the Spanish Civil War.17 The charges were dismissed before trial and he was released.18 He quit the Communist Party in 1940.19 In 1944 Schware entered the armed forces of the United States.20 While in the service he volunteered for duty as a paratrooper and was sent to New Guinea.21 He was honorably discharged from the Army in 1946.22 After finishing college he entered the University of New Mexico law school in 1950, disclosed his past activities and Communist Party association to the dean, operated a business to support his wife and two children while studying, and maintained exemplary conduct during his three years there.23
At the conclusion of the hearing the Board reaffirmed its denial.24 Schware appealed to the New Mexico Supreme Court, which upheld the denial with one justice dissenting.25 In denying a motion for rehearing the court stated that his membership in the Communist Party, together with his other former actions in the use of aliases and record of arrests and his present attitude toward those matters, were the considerations upon which it approved the denial.26 Schware then petitioned the United States Supreme Court for review, and the Court granted certiorari.27
Whether the New Mexico Board of Bar Examiners and Supreme Court denied Rudolph Schware due process under the Fourteenth Amendment by refusing to permit him to take the bar examination?28
A State cannot exclude a person from the practice of law or from any other occupation in a manner or for reasons that contravene the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.29 A State can require high standards of qualification, such as good moral character or proficiency in its law, before it admits an applicant to the bar, but any qualification must have a rational connection with the applicant’s fitness or capacity to practice law.30 Officers of a State cannot exclude an applicant when there is no basis for their finding that he fails to meet these standards, or when their action is invidiously discriminatory.31
Yes. The established facts demonstrate that Schware made a forceful showing of good moral character through uncontradicted testimony from multiple witnesses and letters attesting to his responsibility, trustworthiness, and high ideals, with no evidence of adverse conduct in the fifteen years preceding his application.32 The Board's and court's reliance on aliases used to avoid employment discrimination, arrests without any convictions or even formal charges, and Communist Party membership during the depression era as a young man seeking economic solutions lacks any rational connection to his present fitness to practice law, as these events occurred long ago and involved no moral turpitude or illegal activity on his part.33 The record shows he quit the Party in 1940, served honorably in the military, excelled in law school after full disclosure to the dean, and enjoys good repute among his community and peers.34
The New Mexico authorities deprived Schware of due process by denying him the opportunity to qualify for the practice of law without a rational basis for finding he lacked good moral character.35
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Justice Frankfurter concurred in the judgment.36 He stressed that the New Mexico Supreme Court's legal conclusion that Communist affiliation for six to seven years up to 1940 in and of itself made the petitioner a person of questionable character was so dogmatic an inference as to be wholly unwarranted.37
History overwhelmingly establishes that many youths like the petitioner were drawn by the mirage of communism during the depression era, only to have their eyes later opened to reality.38 Such experiences do not support a presumption that those who entertained but abandoned those views are questionable characters.39 Since the Supreme Court of New Mexico as a matter of law took a contrary view of such a situation in denying petitioner’s application, it denied him due process of law.40