Committee, and subjected to an aggressive series of questions (many of which did not pertain to the committee's legal charge). Scull refused to answer some of these questions and asked whether they pertained to the committee's legal charge. The committee went to court to force him to answer. The Circuit Court of Arlington County ordered Scull to answer the questions. He refused, and was convicted of contempt of court. Scull appealed his conviction to the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals. Without comment, the state supreme court declined to hear his appeal in 1958. Scull appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which granted certiorari and agreed to hear the case. Ruling Associate Justice Hugo Black wrote the decision for the unanimous Court. Scull made four claims: That the committee was part of a program of state-sponsored harassment of those attempting to win racial integration of Virginia's public schools; That the questions put to him violated his First Amendment rights to freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and right to petition; That the information sought was not relevant to the legislative function of the Virginia General Assembly; and That despite repeated requests, the committee failed to show that its interrogatories were relevant to its legal charge. Black declined to address the first three of Scull's claims, deciding instead to rule on the narrow grounds of the fourth claim. The record of the committee's proceedings showed that Scull asked the committee what the purpose of its inquiry was, so that he could determine which questions put to him were pertinent. Chairman Thomson made an ambiguous reply, then told Scull that "several" of the lines of inquiry did not apply to Scull. When Scull claimed that he still did not know what properly constituted the committee's subjects of inquiry, the committee proceeded to ask 31 questions of Scull. Black expressed scepticism regarding the committee's actions: "It is difficult to see how some of these questions have any relationship to the subjects the Committee was authorized to investigate, or how Scull could possibly discover any such relationship from the Chairman's statement." Thomson's testimony in the contempt proceeding before the Circuit Court further muddied things. During his testimony, Thomson "successively ruled out as inapplicable to Scull each of the subjects which the Legislature had authorized the Committee to investigate." Nor did the state circuit court's instructions to Scull clarify matters. Black noted that the circuit court