Biography
Joseph Cort was a Massachusetts-born physician and research physiologist who had belonged to the Communist Party while at Yale. He left the United States for Britain in 1951 and remained abroad after receiving draft orders. A federal grand jury indicted him for draft evasion in 1954 after he had moved to Czechoslovakia. Because he was outside the United States, the indictment did not result in American arrest or confinement. The Supreme Court later protected his right to challenge the government’s attempt to strip his citizenship.
