Editing Learned Hand (section)

====Public opposition to McCarthyism====
Only after stepping down from his position as a full-time judge in 1951 did Hand join the public debate on McCarthyism. Shortly after his semi-retirement, he gave an unscripted speech that was published in ''[[The Washington Post]]'', an anti-McCarthy newspaper. Hand wrote:<!--The punctuation in the following is inaccurate but it is copied exactly from the source. We have to resist the temptation to correct the punctuation in the quotation.-->

<blockquote>[M]y friends, will you not agree that any society which begins to be doubtful of itself; in which one man looks at another and says: "He may be a traitor," in which that spirit has disappeared which says: "I will not accept that, I will not believe that—I will demand proof. I will not say of my brother that he may be a traitor," but I will say, "Produce what you have. I will judge it fairly, and if he is, he shall pay the penalties; but I will not take it on rumor. I will not take it on hearsay. I will remember that what has brought us up from savagery is a loyalty to truth, and truth cannot emerge unless it is subjected to the utmost scrutiny"—will you not agree that a society that has lost sight of that, cannot survive?<ref>{{Harvnb|Hand|1977|pp=223–24}}</ref></blockquote>

Hand followed this up with an address to the [[Board of Governors|Board of Regents]] of the [[University of the State of New York]] the next year. Once again, his attack on McCarthyism won approval from many liberals. Asked to send a copy of his views to McCarthy, Hand replied that he had [[Richard Nixon]] in mind as well.<ref>{{Harvnb|Gunther|1994|pp=588–589}}</ref> Despite his concerns about Nixon as vice president, Hand voted for [[Dwight Eisenhower]] in the [[1952 United States presidential election|1952 election]] and later credited Eisenhower with bringing about McCarthy's downfall in 1954.<ref>{{Harvnb|Gunther|1994|pp=589–590}}</ref>