Caughlan, John, 1909-1999

John Caughlan was a Seattle attorney and civil rights leader.

John Caughlan was born in Missouri in 1909, the son of a Methodist clergyman. The Caughlan family moved to Eastern Washington in 1911, living chiefly in Ellensburg, and then to Seattle where Caughlan graduated from Ballard High School and earned a B.A. at the University of Washington. In the early 1930s he enrolled briefly in a graduate program in English literature at Yale University but, feeling the discipline to be removed from the issues of the day (the problems of the Great Depression and the proposed solutions of the New Deal), he enrolled instead in Harvard Law School, graduating in 1935.

Caughlan returned to Seattle in 1937 after a short stint in New York. He worked briefly for a law firm but was fired after refusing to withdraw from a case in which he represented the Communist Party in a dispute with the city, which had revoked the Party's lease for the Civic Auditorium. In 1938 Caughlan became a deputy prosecutor for King County, although he took leave from this position to represent the Grays Habor Civil Rights Committee as they investigated the destruction of a public hall in Aberdeen, Washington. He also represented CIO official Dick Law at the inquest into the death of his wife, labor activist Laura Law.

Caughlan returned to the King County Prosecutor's Office in 1940, but was informed that he would only be permitted to resume work there if he would publicly denounce the Soviet Union. He refused to do so, was dismissed, and spent the rest of his career in private practice, having as partners at various times Siegfried Hesse, Leonard Schroeter, C.T. Hatten and Lee A. Holley.

Civil liberties and human rights were the two overarching concerns that informed Caughlan's professional activities. In the 1940s and 1950s he represented labor unions, union activists, the Communist Party, the Washington Pension Union, Henry Huff in the Smith Act case of United States v. Henry Huff et al., foreign-born residents facing deportation because of their political activities, and individuals accused of "subversive" or "un-American" activities in cases related to the Smith Act, the McCarran Act, and the McCarran-Walter Act. Hazel Wolf was one of these, threatened with deportation for Commumist Party membership. He also represented, with his partner C.T. "Barry" Hatten, a number of witnesses before the hearings conducted by the Washington State Legislature's Joint Legislative Fact Finding Committee on Un-American Activities, led by Albert F. Canwell, in 1947-1948. He also represented several individuals before the House Committee on Un-American Affairs (HUAC) at its Seattle hearings in 1954, and handled many cases involving screening of Coast Guard personnel. Caughlan had been charged with perjury in 1948, two years after stating in the course of testifying in an immigration case that he was not a member of the Communist Party. He was acquitted, but was himself called before HUAC in 1954 to face the charge again. In 1961 Caughlan was convicted of failure to pay income tax. He served six months in the federal prison camp on McNeil Island and was suspended from practice for thirty days.

Five of Caughlan's cases went to the United States Supreme Court; the most significant of these were Herbert Schneider vs. Willard Smith, Commandant, United States Coast Guard, 1968, which invalidated Cost Guard screening procedures for personnel on United States merchant marine vessels, and United States vs. Eugene Robel, 1967, which invalidated a section of the Subversive Activities Control Act (McCarran Act) which had prohibited employment at defense facilities of members of Communist-action organizations.

In the 1960s and 1970s Caughlan's focus moved to other issues such as segregation and racial discrimination, and human rights beyond the United States. He travelled to Mississippi in the summer of 1964 with other attorneys to assist in the defense of civil rights activists there; at home in Seattle he was involved in racially charged cases, working with members of the Black Panther Party and protesting inquest procedures (which were later changed) in the inquest into the killing of black activist Larry Ward by Seattle police. Caughlan handled many conscientious objector and Selective Service cases during the Vietnam War.

Human rights abuses by governments supported by the United States were an issue of ongoing concern for Caughlan. In 1977 he went to the Philippines as part of a delegation headed by former United States Attorney General Ramsey Clark, on a fact-finding mission to investigate human rights violations by the Marcos regime. During the 1980s he travelled several times to Central America, particularly Nicaragua, participating in a National Lawyers Guild mission in 1984 to observe the Nicaraguan elections, and also represented Central American refugees in their immigration cases. After the1981 murders of Filipino union organizers and anti-Marcos activists Silme Domingo and Gene Viernes, Caughlan was part of the legal team which represented the families in a civil suit against Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos and the Republic of the Philippines, and which was ultimately successful in proving a connnection between the Marcos regime and the murders. In the 1980s Caughlan was also much concerned with nuclear power issues, serving as part of the legal team that defended environmental activists of the Crabshell Alliance after their demonstrations against the construction of the Satsop nuclear facility. He also helped to draft state initiatives banning the importation of nuclear waste into Washington state, and requiring voter approval of the construction of nuclear facilities. In the late 1980s Caughlan became very involved with the Oakland, California-based Line of March, an organization dedicated to the study and analysis of the history and development of Marxist-Leninist thought.

In the 1990s, Caughlan was part of the legal team working on the case of Willem Eickholt, whose boat was seized by United States Customs officials upon his return from a humanitarian mission to Cuba. During this time Caughlan was active in the cause of independent and small party politics, and was involved in the effort to promote Ralph Nader's 1996 presidential campaign.

Caughlan served on the board of directors of the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington. He was a member of the National Lawyers Guild from its founding in 1937 and served on its executive board and committee and as chairperson of its International Committee. He was also a founder and an active member of the Seattle chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. Caughlan died on April 17, 1999.

From the guide to the John Caughlan papers, 1933-1999, (University of Washington Libraries Special Collections)