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Justice White | 1,976 | 6 | majority | Alfred Dunhill of London, Inc. v. Republic of Cuba | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/109448/alfred-dunhill-of-london-inc-v-republic-of-cuba/ | operated merchant vessels. Keeping in mind the importance played by cases involving public vessels in the field of sovereign immunity, it is thus noteworthy that these ten countries (Brazil, Chile, Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Sweden) and the United States have already relinquished by treaty or in practice an important part of the immunity which they claim under the classical theory. *714 It is thus evident that with the possible exception of the United Kingdom little support has been found except on the part of the Soviet Union and its satellites for continued full acceptance of the absolute theory of sovereign immunity. There are evidences that British authorities are aware of its deficiencies and ready for a change. The reasons which obviously motivate state trading countries in adhering to the theory with perhaps increasing rigidity are most persuasive that the United States should change its policy. Furthermore, the granting of sovereign immunity to foreign governments in the courts of the United States is most inconsistent with the action of the Government of the United States in subjecting itself to suit in these same courts in both contract and tort and with its long established policy of not claiming immunity in foreign jurisdictions for its merchant vessels. Finally, the Department feels that the widespread and increasing practice on the part of governments of engaging in commercial activities makes necessary a practice which will enable persons doing business with them to have their rights determined in the courts. For these reasons it will hereafter be the Department's policy to follow the restrictive theory of sovereign immunity in the consideration of requests of foreign governments for a grant of sovereign immunity. It is realized that a shift in policy by the executive cannot control the courts but it is felt that the courts are less likely to allow a plea of sovereign immunity where the executive has declined to do so. There have been indications that at least some Justices of the Supreme Court feel that in this matter courts should follow the branch of the Government charged with responsibility for the conduct of foreign relations. In order that your Department, which is charged with representing the interests of the Government before the courts, may be adequately informed it will be the Department's practice to advise you of all requests by foreign *715 governments for the grant of immunity from suit and of the Department's action thereon. Sincerely yours, For the Secretary of State: JACK B. TATE Acting Legal Adviser MR. |
per_curiam | 1,976 | 200 | per_curiam | Quinn v. Muscare | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/109441/quinn-v-muscare/ | The respondent, a lieutenant in the Chicago Fire Department, was suspended from his job for a 29-day period in 1974 as a result of charges related to his violation of *561 the department's personal-appearance regulation.[1] Following the suspension, the respondent brought an action in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois seeking an injunction and backpay on the ground that the regulation infringed his constitutional right to determine "the details of his personal appearance."[2] The department defended the challenged regulation as a safety measure designed to insure proper functioning of gas masks worn by firefighters and as a means of promoting discipline in the department and the uniform, well-groomed appearance of its members. After a hearing focusing on the operation of the self-contained breathing apparatus used by members of the department, the District Court found that the personal-appearance regulation was justified "on safety grounds" *562 and that the respondent's goatee violated the regulation. Explaining that the other regulations cited in the discharge notice were not "relevant or pertinent to the issues," the court denied the respondent's motion for injunctive relief. The Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit reversed, holding that the respondent "was suspended without procedural due process."[3] The appellate court concluded that the Constitution requires "that some opportunity to respond to charges against him be made available to the governmental employee prior to disciplinary action against him." The Court of Appeals did not dispute the District Court's determination that "the only issue" was whether the suspension for having a goatee was "justifiable under the circumstances." Although it did not reach the merits of the respondent's challenge to the constitutionality of the hair regulation, the Court of Appeals did note that the regulation "does not appear to be co-extensive with the need for safe and efficient use of gas masks and, if that is the sole justification, might well be more narrowly drawn." Following the grant of certiorari and the oral argument in this case, this Court in another case upheld a police department hair regulation similar to that challenged by the respondent in the present litigation. Kelley v. Johnson, ante, p. 238. In that case, we concluded that "the overall need for discipline, esprit de corps, and uniformity" defeated the policeman's "claim based on the liberty guaranty of the Fourteenth Amendment." Ante, at 246, 248. Kelley v. Johnson renders immaterial the District Court's factual determination regarding the *563 safety justification for the department's hair regulation about which the Court of Appeals expressed doubt. Moreover, after the grant of certiorari, this Court was informed that |
Justice Marshall | 1,986 | 15 | majority | Thomas v. Arn | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/111545/thomas-v-arn/ | In 1976, Congress amended 101 of the Federal Magistrates Act, 28 U.S. C. 636, to provide that a United States district judge may refer dispositive pretrial motions, and petitions for writ of habeas corpus, to a magistrate, who shall conduct appropriate proceedings and recommend dispositions. *142 Stat. 2729.[1] The amendments also provide that any party that disagrees with the magistrate's recommendations "may serve and file written objections" to the magistrate's report, and thus obtain de novo review by the district judge.[2] The question presented is whether a court of appeals may exercise its supervisory powers to establish a rule that the failure to file objections to the magistrate's report waives the right to appeal the district court's judgment. We hold that it may. I Petitioner was convicted by an Ohio court in 1978 of fatally shooting her common-law husband during an argument. *143 The evidence at trial showed that the victim was a violent man who had beaten petitioner on a number of occasions during the previous three years. Petitioner raised the issue of self-defense at trial, and sought to call two witnesses who would present expert testimony concerning the Battered Wife Syndrome. After conducting a voir dire of these witnesses in chambers, the trial court refused to admit the testimony, on the grounds that the jury did not need the assistance of expert testimony to understand the case and that the witnesses, who had not personally examined petitioner, could not testify about her state of mind at the time of the shooting. The Court of Appeals of Cuyahoga County reversed. The court's syllabus[3] concluded that testimony concerning the Battered Wife Syndrome is admissible "to afford the jury an understanding of the defendant's state of mind at the time she committed the homicide." App. 9. The Ohio Supreme Court, on discretionary review, reversed. The court held that the testimony was irrelevant to the issue of self-defense, and that its prejudicial effect would outweigh its probative value. Having exhausted state remedies, petitioner sought habeas corpus relief in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio. The petition raised, inter alia, the question whether petitioner was denied a fair trial by the trial court's refusal to admit testimony concerning the Battered Wife Syndrome. Petitioner filed a memorandum of law in support of the petition. The District Judge, acting pursuant to 28 U.S. C. 636(b)(1)(B), referred the case, including petitioner's memorandum of law, to a Magistrate. The Magistrate did not hold a hearing. On May 11, 1982, the Magistrate issued his report, containing proposed findings of fact and conclusions of |
Justice Marshall | 1,986 | 15 | majority | Thomas v. Arn | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/111545/thomas-v-arn/ | his report, containing proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law and recommending *144 that the writ be denied. On the issue of the Battered Wife Syndrome testimony, the Magistrate concluded that the trial court's failure to admit the proffered testimony had not impaired the fundamental fairness of the trial, and therefore was not an adequate ground for habeas corpus relief. The last page of the Magistrate's report contained the prominent legend: "ANY OBJECTIONS to this Report and Recommendation must be filed with the Clerk of Courts within ten (10) days of receipt of this notice. Failure to file objections within the specified time waives the right to appeal the District Court's order. See: United" Despite this clear notice, petitioner failed to file objections at any time. She sought and received an extension of time to file objections through June 15, 1982, on the grounds that "this case entails many substantive issues and counsel needs more time to write his brief." However, petitioner made no further submissions on the merits to the District Court. Notwithstanding petitioner's failure to file objections, the District Judge sua sponte "review[ed] the entire record de novo," App. 59, and dismissed the petition on the merits. Petitioner sought and was granted leave to Petitioner's brief on appeal raised only the issue of the Battered Wife Syndrome testimony. The brief provided no explanation for petitioner's failure to object to the Magistrate's report. Counsel for petitioner waived oral argument, and the case was decided on the briefs. The Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed. Without reaching the merits, it held that petitioner had waived the right to appeal by failing to file objections to the Magistrate's report. The court relied upon its prior decision in United which established the prospective rule that failure to file timely objections with the district court waives subsequent review in the *145 court of appeals. We granted the petition for a writ of certiorari, and we now affirm. II In United the appellant failed to object to the Magistrate's report, and the District Court adopted that report as its disposition of the case. The appellant then brought an The Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit considered the threshold question whether the appellant's failure to apprise the District Court of its disagreement with the Magistrate's recommendation waived the right to The court held: "The permissive language of 28 U.S. C. 636 suggests that a party's failure to file objections is not a waiver of appellate review. However, the fundamental congressional policy underlying the Magistrate's Act to improve access to the |
Justice Marshall | 1,986 | 15 | majority | Thomas v. Arn | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/111545/thomas-v-arn/ | underlying the Magistrate's Act to improve access to the federal courts and aid the efficient administration of justice is best served by our holding that a party shall file objections with the district court or else waive right to Additionally, through the exercise of our supervisory power, we hold that a party shall be informed by the magistrate that objections must be filed within ten days or further appeal is waived. "However, we give our ruling only prospective effect because rules of procedure should promote, not defeat the ends of justice" The nature of the rule and its prospective application demonstrate that the court intended to adopt a "rul[e] of procedure," in the exercise of its supervisory powers. Later opinions of the Sixth Circuit make it clear that the court views in this way. See ("In this Court promulgated [a] rule of waiver"); United (characterizing * as "[r]ulemaking through the exercise of supervisory powers"). Thus, petitioner's first contention that the Court of Appeals has refused to exercise the jurisdiction that Congress granted it is simply inaccurate. The Court of Appeals expressly acknowledged that it had subject-matter jurisdiction over petitioner's The Sixth Circuit has also shown that its rule is not jurisdictional by excusing the procedural default in a recent case. See We therefore conclude that neither the intent nor the practical effect of the Sixth Circuit's waiver rule is to restrict the court's own jurisdiction.[4] It cannot be doubted that the courts of appeals have supervisory powers that permit, at the least, the promulgation of procedural rules governing the management of litigation. Cf. Indeed, this Court has acknowledged the power of the courts of appeals to mandate "procedures deemed desirable from the viewpoint of sound judicial practice although *147 in nowise commanded by statute or by the Constitution." ; see also[5] Had petitioner failed to comply with a scheduling order or pay a filing fee established by a court of appeals, that court could certainly dismiss the Cf. The fact that the Sixth Circuit has deemed petitioner to have forfeited her statutory right to an appeal is not enough, standing alone, to invalidate the court's exercise of its supervisory power. The Sixth Circuit's decision to require the filing of objections is supported by sound considerations of judicial economy. The filing of objections to a magistrate's report enables the district judge to focus attention on those issues factual and legal that are at the heart of the parties' dispute.[6] The Sixth Circuit's rule, by precluding appellate *148 review of any issue not contained in objections, |
Justice Marshall | 1,986 | 15 | majority | Thomas v. Arn | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/111545/thomas-v-arn/ | appellate *148 review of any issue not contained in objections, prevents a litigant from "sandbagging" the district judge by failing to object and then appealing. Absent such a rule, any issue before the magistrate would be a proper subject for appellate review. This would either force the court of appeals to consider claims that were never reviewed by the district court, or force the district court to review every issue in every case, no matter how thorough the magistrate's analysis and even if both parties were satisfied with the magistrate's report. Either result would be an inefficient use of judicial resources. In short, "[t]he same rationale that prevents a party from raising an issue before a circuit court of appeals that was not raised before the district court applies here." United (CA4) (footnote omitted), cert. denied, IV Even a sensible and efficient use of the supervisory power, however, is invalid if it conflicts with constitutional or statutory provisions. A contrary result "would confer on the judiciary discretionary power to disregard the considered limitations of the law it is charged with enforcing." United Thus we now consider whether the Sixth Circuit's waiver rule conflicts with statutory law or with the Constitution. A Petitioner argues that the Federal Magistrates Act precludes the waiver rule adopted by the Sixth Circuit. Her argument focuses on the permissive nature of the statutory language. The statute provides that a litigant "may" file objections, and nowhere states that the failure to do so will waive an Petitioner cites the Eighth Circuit's conclusion that "[o]ne would think that if Congress had wished such a drastic consequence to follow from the missing of the ten-day time limit, it would have said so explicitly." Lorin However, *149 we need not decide whether the Act mandates a waiver of appellate review absent objections. We hold only that it does not forbid such a rule. Section 636(b)(1)(C) provides that "[a] judge of the [district] court shall make a de novo determination of those portions of the report or specified proposed findings or recommendations to which objection is made." The statute does not on its face require any review at all, by either the district court or the court of appeals, of any issue that is not the subject of an objection. Petitioner argues, however, that the statutory language and purpose implicitly require the district court to review a magistrate's report even if no party objects. If petitioner's interpretation of the statute is correct, then the waiver of appellate review, as formulated by the Sixth and other Circuits, proceeds from an erroneous assumption |
Justice Marshall | 1,986 | 15 | majority | Thomas v. Arn | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/111545/thomas-v-arn/ | the Sixth and other Circuits, proceeds from an erroneous assumption that the failure to object may constitute a procedural default waiving review even at the district court level.[7] Moreover, were the district judge required to review the magistrate's report in every case, the waiver of appellate review would not promote judicial economy as discussed in Part Petitioner first argues that a failure to object waives only de novo review, and that the district judge must still review the magistrate's report under some lesser standard. However, 636(b)(1)(C) simply does not provide for such review. This omission does not seem to be inadvertent, because Congress provided for a "clearly erroneous or contrary to law" standard of review of a magistrate's disposition of certain pretrial matters in 636(b)(1)(A). See Park Motor Mart, Nor *150 does petitioner point to anything in the legislative history of the 1976 amendments mandating review under some lesser standard. We are therefore not persuaded that the statute positively requires some lesser review by the district court when no objections are filed. Petitioner also argues that, under the Act, the obligatory filing of objections extends only to findings of fact. She urges that Congress, in order to vest final authority over questions of law in an Article judge, intended that the district judge would automatically review the magistrate's conclusions of law. We reject, however, petitioner's distinction between factual and legal issues. Once again, the plain language of the statute recognizes no such distinction.[8] We also fail to find such a requirement in the legislative history. It does not appear that Congress intended to require district court review of a magistrate's factual or legal conclusions, under a de novo or any other standard, when neither party objects to those findings. The House and Senate Reports accompanying the 1976 amendments do not expressly consider what sort of review the district court should perform when no party objects to the magistrate's report. See S. Rep. No. -625, pp. 9-10 (hereafter Senate Report); H. R. Rep. No. -1609, p. 11 (hereafter House Report). There is nothing in those Reports, however, that demonstrates an intent to require the district court to give any more consideration to the magistrate's report than the court considers appropriate.[9] Moreover, the Subcommittee *1 that drafted and held hearings on the 1976 amendments had before it the guidelines of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts concerning the efficient use of magistrates. Those guidelines recommended to the district courts that "[w]here a magistrate makes a finding or ruling on a motion or an issue, his determination should become that |
Justice Marshall | 1,986 | 15 | majority | Thomas v. Arn | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/111545/thomas-v-arn/ | a motion or an issue, his determination should become that of the district court, unless specific objection is filed within a reasonable time." See Jurisdiction of United States Magistrates, Hearings on S. 1283 before the Subcommittee on Improvements in Judicial Machinery of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, th Cong., 1st Sess., 24 (1975) (emphasis added) (hereafter Senate Hearings). The Committee also heard Judge Metzner of the Southern District of New York, the chairman of a Judicial Conference Committee on the administration of the magistrate system, testify that he personally followed that practice. See[10] The *152 Judicial Conference of the United States, which supported the de novo standard of review eventually incorporated in 636(b)(1)(C), opined that in most instances no party would object to the magistrate's recommendation, and the litigation would terminate with the judge's adoption of the magistrate's report. See Senate Hearings, at 35, 37. Congress apparently assumed, therefore, that any party who was dissatisfied for any reason with the magistrate's report would file objections, and those objections would trigger district court review.[11] There is no indication that Congress, in enacting 636(b)(1)(C), intended to require a district judge to review a magistrate's report to which no objections are filed. It did not preclude treating the failure to object as a procedural default, waiving the right to further consideration of any sort. We thus find nothing in the statute or the legislative history that convinces us that Congress intended to forbid a rule such as the one adopted by the Sixth Circuit. Nor is the waiver of appellate review inconsistent with the purposes of the Act. The Act grew out of Congress' desire to give district judges "additional assistance" in dealing with a caseload that was increasing far more rapidly than the number of judgeships.[12] Congress did not intend district judges "to devote a *153 substantial portion of their available time to various procedural steps rather than to the trial itself." House Report, at 7. Nor does the legislative history indicate that Congress intended this task merely to be transferred to the court of appeals. It seems clear that Congress would not have wanted district judges to devote time to reviewing magistrate's reports except to the extent that such review is requested by the parties or otherwise necessitated by Article of the Constitution. We now turn to the latter question. B Petitioner contends that the waiver of appellate review violates Article and the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. Article vests the judicial power of the United States in judges who have life tenure and protection from decreases in |
Justice Marshall | 1,986 | 15 | majority | Thomas v. Arn | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/111545/thomas-v-arn/ | judges who have life tenure and protection from decreases in salary.[13] Although a magistrate is not an Article judge, this Court has held that a district court may refer dispositive motions to a magistrate for a recommendation so long as "the entire process takes place under the district court's total control and jurisdiction," United and the judge " `exercise[s] the ultimate authority to issue an appropriate order,' " quoting Senate Report, at 3. The Sixth Circuit's rule, as petitioner sees it, permits a magistrate to exercise the Article judicial power, because the rule forecloses meaningful review of a magistrate's report at both the district and appellate levels if no objections are filed. We find that argument untenable. The waiver of appellate review does not implicate Article because it is the *154 district court, not the court of appeals, that must exercise supervision over the magistrate. Even assuming, however, that the effect of the Sixth Circuit's rule is to permit both the district judge and the court of appeals to refuse to review a magistrate's report absent timely objection, we do not believe that the rule elevates the magistrate from an adjunct to the functional equivalent of an Article judge. The rule merely establishes a procedural default that has no effect on the magistrate's or the court's jurisdiction. The district judge has jurisdiction over the case at all times. He retains full authority to decide whether to refer a case to the magistrate, to review the magistrate's report, and to enter judgment. Any party that desires plenary consideration by the Article judge of any issue need only ask. Moreover, while the statute does not require the judge to review an issue de novo if no objections are filed, it does not preclude further review by the district judge, sua sponte or at the request of a party, under a de novo or any other standard. Indeed, in the present case, the District Judge made a de novo determination of the petition despite petitioner's failure even to suggest that the Magistrate erred. The Sixth Circuit's rule, therefore, has not removed " `the essential attributes of the judicial power,' " Northern Pipeline quoting from the Article tribunal.[14] *155 Petitioner claims also that she was denied her statutory right of appeal, in violation of the Due Process Clause. That right was not denied, however; it was merely conditioned upon the filing of a piece of paper. Petitioner was notified in unambiguous terms of the consequences of a failure to file, and deliberately failed to file nevertheless. We recently reiterated our longstanding maxim that "the |
Justice Marshall | 1,986 | 15 | majority | Thomas v. Arn | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/111545/thomas-v-arn/ | file nevertheless. We recently reiterated our longstanding maxim that "the State certainly accords due process when it terminates a claim for failure to comply with a reasonable procedural or evidentiary rule." The same rationale applies to the forfeiture of an appeal, and we believe that the Sixth Circuit's rule is reasonable. Litigants subject to the Sixth Circuit's rule are afforded " `an opportunity granted at a meaningful time and in a meaningful manner,' " ib quoting to obtain a hearing by the Court of Appeals. We also emphasize that, because the rule is a nonjurisdictional waiver provision, the Court of Appeals may excuse the default in the interests of justice.[15] V We hold that a court of appeals may adopt a rule conditioning appeal, when taken from a district court judgment that adopts a magistrate's recommendation, upon the filing of objections with the district court identifying those issues on which further review is desired. Such a rule, at least when it incorporates clear notice to the litigants and an opportunity to seek an extension of time for filing objections, is a valid exercise of the supervisory power that does not violate either the Federal Magistrates Act or the Constitution. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is Affirmed. |
Justice Douglas | 1,970 | 10 | majority | American Farm Lines v. Black Ball Freight Service | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/108117/american-farm-lines-v-black-ball-freight-service/ | The Interstate Commerce Commission has statutory power to grant motor carriers temporary operating authority "without hearings or other proceedings" when the authority relates to a "service for which there is an immediate and urgent need" and where there is "no *534 carrier service capable of meeting such need."[1] Interstate Commerce Act 210a, as amended, 49 U.S. C. 310a. The ICC processes applications for such authority under rules promulgated in 1965. 49 CFR pt. 1131.[2] Among other things, those rules require that an applicant accompany his application with supporting statements of shippers that contain information "designed to establish an immediate and urgent need for service which cannot be met by existing carriers." 1131.2 Each such supporting statement "must contain at least" 11 items of information[3] including the following: "(8) Whether efforts have been made to obtain the service from existing motor, rail, or water carriers, and the dates and results of such efforts. "(9) Names and addresses of existing carriers who have either failed or refused to provide the service, and the reasons given for any such failure or refusal." *535 Appellant American Farm Lines (AFL) filed an application for temporary operating authority.[4] The application was accompanied by a supporting statement of the Department of Defense (DOD). The ICC Temporary *536 Authorities Board denied the application on the ground that the "applicant has not established that there exists an immediate and urgent need for any of the service proposed." Division I of the ICC (acting as an Appellate Division) reversed the Board and granted AFL temporary authority. Protesting carriers sought review of this action in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington. A single judge of the District Court temporarily restrained the operation of the ICC order and the ICC thereupon ordered postponement of the operation of its grant. At that time numerous petitions for reconsideration were pending before the Commission and the stay order did not direct the Commission to stay its hand with respect to them. The record was indeed not filed with the court until much later. Meanwhile, the Commission granted the petitions and reopened the proceeding to receive a further supporting statement of DOD. This took the form of the verified statement of Vincent F. Caputo, DOD Director for Transportation and Warehousing Policy, which was submitted as a purported reply to the pending petitions for reconsideration. Based upon this statement, the ICC entered a new order granting the AFL application. A single judge of the District Court restrained the operation of the new order. Thereafter a three-judge District Court conducted a full hearing |
Justice Douglas | 1,970 | 10 | majority | American Farm Lines v. Black Ball Freight Service | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/108117/american-farm-lines-v-black-ball-freight-service/ | order. Thereafter a three-judge District Court conducted a full hearing on the merits.[5] The ICC admitted at that stage that its first order "may not have been based upon evidence to support its conclusion," but argued that there was no infirmity in the new order. The three-judge court set aside both orders. Both AFL and ICC appealed to this Court and we noted probable jurisdiction.[6] *537 I The first alleged error in the case is the failure of the Interstate Commerce Commission to require strict compliance with its own rules. The rules in question, unlike some of our own, do not involve "jurisdictional" problems but only require certain information to be set forth in statements filed in support of applications of motor carriers for temporary operating authority. The Caputo statement asserted that part of the tremendous volume of traffic that DOD moved in the territories involved had to be moved "in the most expeditious manner possible," and that, since air transport was prohibitively expensive "except in the most extreme emergencies," there was an "imperative" need for the most expeditious motor carrier service. The need for this expeditious transport did not rest merely on a desire to obtain the most efficient service, but in addition rested on the need to coordinate arrival times of shipments with factory production schedules and with shiploading or airlift times for overseas shipments. The particular inadequacies in existing service were pointed out, namely, the delays inherent in joint-line service, regular-route service, and the use of single drivers. The statement did not assert that none of the existing carriers provided sufficiently expeditious service to meet DOD needs; rather it claimed that the carriers providing satisfactory service in the territories in question were so few in number that the additional services of AFL were required to meet DOD's transportation needs. Concededly, the Caputo statement did not give the dates of DOD's efforts to secure service from other existing carriers or a complete list of the names and addresses of the carriers who failed or refused to provide service, as required by the terms of subsections (8) and (9). 49 CFR 1131.2 Such a complete listing of this information, *538 given the volume of traffic involved, would indeed have been a monumental undertaking. The failure of the Caputo statement to provide these particular specifics did not prejudice the carriers in making precise and informed objections to AFL's application. The briefest perusal of the objecting carriers' replies, which cover some 156 pages in the printed record of these appeals, belies any such contention. Neither was the statement so devoid of |
Justice Douglas | 1,970 | 10 | majority | American Farm Lines v. Black Ball Freight Service | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/108117/american-farm-lines-v-black-ball-freight-service/ | any such contention. Neither was the statement so devoid of information that it, along with the replies of the protesting carriers, could not support a finding that AFL's service was required to meet DOD's immediate and urgent transportation needs. In our view, the District Court exacted a standard of compliance with procedural rules that was wholly unnecessary to provide an adequate record to review the Commission's decision. The Commission is entitled to a measure of discretion in administering its own procedural rules in such a manner as it deems necessary to resolve quickly and correctly urgent transportation problems. It is argued that the rules were adopted to confer important procedural benefits upon individuals; in opposition it is said the rules were intended primarily to facilitate the development of relevant information for the Commission's use in deciding applications for temporary authority. We agree with the Commission that the rules were promulgated for the purpose of providing the "necessary information" for the Commission "to reach an informed and equitable decision" on temporary authority applications. ICC Policy Release of January 23, 1968. The Commission stated that requests for temporary authority would be turned down "if the applications do not adequately comply with [the] rules." The rules were not intended primarily to confer important procedural benefits upon individuals in the face of otherwise unfettered discretion *539 as in ; nor is this a case in which an agency required by rule to exercise independent discretion has failed to do so. ; Thus there is no reason to exempt this case from the general principle that "[i]t is always within the discretion of a court or an administrative agency to relax or modify its procedural rules adopted for the orderly transaction of business before it when in a given case the ends of justice require it. The action of either in such a case is not reviewable except upon a showing of substantial prejudice to the complaining party." And see ; Sun Oil ; We deal here with the grant of temporary authority similar to that granted in Estes Express aff'd, There the grant of temporary authority was upheld even though there may not have been literal compliance with subsections (8) and (9) of the Commission's rules. That result was in line with 210a (a) of the Act which was designed to provide the Commission with a swift and procedurally simple ability to respond to urgent transportation needs. That functional approach is served by treating (8) and (9) not as inflexible procedural conditions but as tools to aid the Commission in exercising its discretion to |
Justice Douglas | 1,970 | 10 | majority | American Farm Lines v. Black Ball Freight Service | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/108117/american-farm-lines-v-black-ball-freight-service/ | tools to aid the Commission in exercising its discretion to meet "an immediate and urgent need" for services where the existing service is incapable of meeting that need. Unlike some rules, the present ones are mere aids to the exercise of the agency's independent discretion. II After the Commission issued its first order, petitions for reconsideration were filed and before they were passed *540 upon, some carriers filed suit and a single judge temporarily restrained operation of that first order. It was after that order issued and over a month before the case was argued to the three-judge court that the Commission granted the petitions for rehearing and reopened the record and received the Caputo verified statement. The District Court held that the pendency of the review proceedings deprived the Commission of jurisdiction to reopen the administrative record. Congress has provided as respects some regulatory systems that the agency may modify any finding up until the record is filed with a court. Such is the provision of the National Labor Relations Act, as amended, 29 U.S. C. (d) and (e), which provides that any subsequent changes in the record will be made only at the direction of the court. A similar provision is included in 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, as amended, 15 U.S. C. 45 and in 11 of the Clayton Act, as amended, 15 U.S. C. 21 And a like provision is included in the review by the courts of appeals of orders of other designated federal agencies. 28 U.S. C. 2347 (1964 ed., Supp. IV). But there is no such requirement in the Interstate Commerce Act.[7] It indeed empowers the Commission "at any time to grant rehearings as to any decision, order, or requirement and to reverse, change, or modify the same."[8] The power of the Commission to grant rehearings is not limited or qualified by the terms of 49 U.S. C. *541 17 (6) or 17 (7). Thus in 17 (6) it is said, "Rehearing, reargument, or reconsideration may be granted if sufficient reason therefor be made to appear." And 17 (7) provides that if after rehearing or reconsideration the original decision, order, or requirement appears "unjust or unwarranted," the Commission may "reverse, change, or modify" the same. These broad powers are plainly adequate to add to the findings or firm them up as the Commission deems desirable, absent any collision or interference with the District Court. Unless Congress provides otherwise, "[W]here a motion for rehearing is in fact filed there is no final action until the rehearing is denied." In multi-party proceedings, such |
Justice Douglas | 1,970 | 10 | majority | American Farm Lines v. Black Ball Freight Service | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/108117/american-farm-lines-v-black-ball-freight-service/ | action until the rehearing is denied." In multi-party proceedings, such as the present one, some may seek judicial review and others may seek administrative reconsideration. "That both tribunals have jurisdiction does not mean, of course, that they will act at cross purposes." Wrather-Alvarez Broadcasting, The concept "of an indivisible jurisdiction which must be all in one tribunal or all in the other may fit" some statutory schemes, ibid., but it does not fit this one. This power of the Commission to reconsider a prior decision does not necessarily collide with the judicial power of review. For while the court properly could provide temporary relief against a Commission order, its issuance does not mean that the Commission loses all jurisdiction to complete the administrative process. It does mean that thereafter the Commission is "without power to act inconsistently with the court's jurisdiction." Inland Steel When the Commission made the additional findings after its first order was stayed by the court, it did not act inconsistently with what the court had done. It did not interfere in the slightest with the court's protective *542 order. What the Commission did came before the court was ready to hear arguments on the merits and before the record was filed with it. Moreover, the Commission in light of the District Court's stay, by express terms, directed AFL not to perform operations under the first order and made the second order effective only on further order of the Commission.[9] Since by the Act the Commission never lost jurisdiction to pass on petitions for rehearing, and since the stay order did not forbid it from acting on those pending petitions, it was not necessary for the Commission to seek permission of the court to make those rulings. The Commission reopened the record merely to remedy a deficiency in it before any judicial review of the merits had commenced and fully honored the stay order of the District Court. It therefore acted in full harmony with the court's jurisdiction. Reversed. MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN, whom MR. JUSTICE STEWART and MR. |
Justice Burger | 1,971 | 12 | majority | Santobello v. New York | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/108416/santobello-v-new-york/ | We granted certiorari in this case to determine whether the State's failure to keep a commitment concerning *258 the sentence recommendation on a guilty plea required a new trial. The facts are not in dispute. The State of New York indicted petitioner in 1969 on two felony counts, Promoting Gambling in the First Degree, and Possession of Gambling Records in the First Degree, N. Y. Penal Law 225.10, 225.20. Petitioner first entered a plea of not guilty to both counts. After negotiations, the Assistant District Attorney in charge of the case agreed to permit petitioner to plead guilty to a lesser-included offense, Possession of Gambling Records in the Second Degree, N. Y. Penal Law 225.15, conviction of which would carry a maximum prison sentence of one year. The prosecutor agreed to make no recommendation as to the sentence. On June 16, 1969, petitioner accordingly withdrew his plea of not guilty and entered a plea of guilty to the lesser charge. Petitioner represented to the sentencing judge that the plea was voluntary and that the facts of the case, as described by the Assistant District Attorney, were true. The court accepted the plea and set a date for sentencing. A series of delays followed, owing primarily to the absence of a pre-sentence report, so that by September 23, 1969, petitioner had still not been sentenced. By that date petitioner acquired new defense counsel. Petitioner's new counsel moved immediately to withdraw the guilty plea. In an accompanying affidavit, petitioner alleged that he did not know at the time of his plea that crucial evidence against him had been obtained as a result of an illegal search. The accuracy of this affidavit is subject to challenge since petitioner had filed and withdrawn a motion to suppress, before pleading guilty. In addition to his motion to withdraw his guilty plea, petitioner renewed the motion to suppress and filed a motion to inspect the grand jury minutes. *259 These three motions in turn caused further delay until November 26, 1969, when the court denied all three and set January 9, as the date for sentencing. On January 9 petitioner appeared before a different judge, the judge who had presided over the case to this juncture having retired. Petitioner renewed his motions, and the court again rejected them. The court then turned to consideration of the sentence. At this appearance, another prosecutor had replaced the prosecutor who had negotiated the plea. The new prosecutor recommended the maximum one-year sentence. In making this recommendation, he cited petitioner's criminal record and alleged links with organized crime. Defense counsel |
Justice Burger | 1,971 | 12 | majority | Santobello v. New York | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/108416/santobello-v-new-york/ | criminal record and alleged links with organized crime. Defense counsel immediately objected on the ground that the State had promised petitioner before the plea was entered that there would be no sentence recommendation by the prosecution. He sought to adjourn the sentence hearing in order to have time to prepare proof of the first prosecutor's promise. The second prosecutor, apparently ignorant of his colleague's commitment, argued that there was nothing in the record to support petitioner's claim of a promise, but the State, in subsequent proceedings, has not contested that such a promise was made. The sentencing judge ended discussion, with the following statement, quoting extensively from the presentence report: "Mr. Aronstein [Defense Counsel], I am not at all influenced by what the District Attorney says, so that there is no need to adjourn the sentence, and there is no need to have any testimony. It doesn't make a particle of difference what the District Attorney says he will do, or what he doesn't do. "I have here, Mr. Aronstein, a probation report. I have here a history of a long, long serious criminal record. I have here a picture of the life history of this man. *260 " `He is unamenable to supervision in the community. He is a professional criminal.' This is in quotes. `And a recidivist. Institutionalization'; that means, in plain language, just putting him away, `is the only means of halting his anti-social activities,' and protecting you, your family, me, my family, protecting society. `Institutionalization.' Plain language, put him behind bars. "Under the plea, I can only send him to the New York City Correctional Institution for men for one year, which I am hereby doing." The judge then imposed the maximum sentence of one year. Petitioner sought and obtained a certificate of reasonable doubt and was admitted to bail pending an appeal. The Supreme Court of the State of New York, Appellate Division, First Department, unanimously affirmed petitioner's conviction, and petitioner was denied leave to appeal to the New York Court of Appeals. Petitioner then sought certiorari in this Court. Mr. Justice Harlan granted bail pending our disposition of the case. This record represents another example of an unfortunate lapse in orderly prosecutorial procedures, in part, no doubt, because of the enormous increase in the workload of the often understaffed prosecutor's offices. The heavy workload may well explain these episodes, but it does not excuse them. The disposition of criminal charges by agreement between the prosecutor and the accused, sometimes loosely called "plea bargaining," is an essential component of the administration of justice. Properly administered, |
Justice Burger | 1,971 | 12 | majority | Santobello v. New York | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/108416/santobello-v-new-york/ | an essential component of the administration of justice. Properly administered, it is to be encouraged. If every criminal charge were subjected to a full-scale trial, the States and the Federal Government would need to multiply by many times the number of judges and court facilities. *261 Disposition of charges after plea discussions is not only an essential part of the process but a highly desirable part for many reasons. It leads to prompt and largely final disposition of most criminal cases; it avoids much of the corrosive impact of enforced idleness during pretrial confinement for those who are denied release pending trial; it protects the public from those accused persons who are prone to continue criminal conduct even while on pretrial release; and, by shortening the time between charge and disposition, it enhances whatever may be the rehabilitative prospects of the guilty when they are ultimately imprisoned. See However, all of these considerations presuppose fairness in securing agreement between an accused and a prosecutor. It is now clear, for example, that the accused pleading guilty must be counseled, absent a waiver. Fed. Rule Crim. Proc. 11, governing pleas in federal courts, now makes clear that the sentencing judge must develop, on the record, the factual basis for the plea, as, for example, by having the accused describe the conduct that gave rise to the charge.[1] The plea must, of course, be voluntary and knowing and if it was induced by promises, the essence of those promises must *262 in some way be made known. There is, of course, no absolute right to have a guilty plea accepted. ; Fed. Rule Crim. Proc. 11. A court may reject a plea in exercise of sound judicial discretion. This phase of the process of criminal justice, and the adjudicative element inherent in accepting a plea of guilty, must be attended by safeguards to insure the defendant what is reasonably due in the circumstances. Those circumstances will vary, but a constant factor is that when a plea rests in any significant degree on a promise or agreement of the prosecutor, so that it can be said to be part of the inducement or consideration, such promise must be fulfilled. On this record, petitioner "bargained" and negotiated for a particular plea in order to secure dismissal of more serious charges, but also on condition that no sentence recommendation would be made by the prosecutor. It is now conceded that the promise to abstain from a recommendation was made, and at this stage the prosecution is not in a good position to argue that its inadvertent |
Justice Burger | 1,971 | 12 | majority | Santobello v. New York | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/108416/santobello-v-new-york/ | not in a good position to argue that its inadvertent breach of agreement is immaterial. The staff lawyers in a prosecutor's office have the burden of "letting the left hand know what the right hand is doing" or has done. That the breach of agreement was inadvertent does not lessen its impact. We need not reach the question whether the sentencing judge would or would not have been influenced had he known all the details of the negotiations for the plea. He stated that the prosecutor's recommendation did not influence him and we have no reason to doubt that. Nevertheless, we conclude that the interests of justice and appropriate recognition of the duties of the prosecution in relation to promises made in the negotiation of pleas of guilty will be best served by remanding the case *263 to the state courts for further consideration. The ultimate relief to which petitioner is entitled we leave to the discretion of the state court, which is in a better position to decide whether the circumstances of this case require only that there be specific performance of the agreement on the plea, in which case petitioner should be resentenced by a different judge, or whether, in the view of the state court, the circumstances require granting the relief sought by petitioner, i. e., the opportunity to withdraw his plea of guilty.[2] We emphasize that this is in no sense to question the fairness of the sentencing judge; the fault here rests on the prosecutor, not on the sentencing judge. The judgment is vacated and the case is remanded for reconsideration not inconsistent with this opinion. MR. |
Justice Kennedy | 2,003 | 4 | concurring | Moseley v. v. Secret Catalogue, Inc. | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/122261/moseley-v-v-secret-catalogue-inc/ | As of this date, few courts have reviewed the statute we are considering, the Federal Trademark Dilution Act, 15 U.S. C. 1125(c), and I agree with the Court that the evidentiary showing required by the statute can be clarified on remand. The conclusion that the VICTORIA'S SECRET mark is a famous mark has not been challenged throughout the litigation, ante, at 425, 432, and seems not to be in question. The remaining issue is what factors are to be considered to establish dilution. For this inquiry, considerable attention should be given, in my view, to the word "capacity" in the statutory phrase that defines dilution as "the lessening of the capacity of a famous mark to identify and distinguish goods or services." 15 U.S. C. 1127. When a competing mark is first adopted, there will be circumstances when the case can turn on the probable consequences its commercial use will have for the famous mark. In this respect, the word "capacity" imports into the dilution inquiry both the present and the potential power of the famous mark to identify and distinguish goods, and in some cases the fact that this power will be diminished could suffice to show dilution. Capacity is defined as "the power or ability to hold, receive, or accommodate." Webster's Third New International Dictionary 330 (1961); see also Webster's New International Dictionary 396 (2d ed. 1949) ("Power of receiving, containing, or absorbing"); 2 Oxford English Dictionary 857 (2d ed. 1989) ("Ability to receive or contain; holding power"); American Heritage Dictionary 275 (4th ed. 2000) ("The ability to receive, hold, or absorb"). If a mark will erode or lessen the power of the famous mark to give customers the assurance of quality and the full satisfaction they have in knowing they have purchased goods bearing the famous mark, the elements of dilution may be established. Diminishment of the famous mark's capacity can be shown by the probable consequences flowing from use or adoption *436 of the competing mark. This analysis is confirmed by the statutory authorization to obtain injunctive relief. 15 U.S. C. 1125(c)(2). The essential role of injunctive relief is to "prevent future wrong, although no right has yet been violated." Swift & Equity principles encourage those who are injured to assert their rights promptly. A holder of a famous mark threatened with diminishment of the mark's capacity to serve its purpose should not be forced to wait until the damage is done and the distinctiveness of the mark has been eroded. In this case, the District Court found that petitioners' trademark had tarnished the VICTORIA'S SECRET |
Justice Douglas | 1,972 | 10 | dissenting | Johnson v. Louisiana | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/108538/johnson-v-louisiana/ | [*] Appellant in the Louisiana case and petitioners in the Oregon case were convicted by juries that were less than unanimous. This procedure is authorized by both the *3 Louisiana and Oregon Constitutions. Their claim, rejected by the majority, is that this procedure is a violation of their federal constitutional rights. With due respect to the majority, I dissent from this radical departure from American traditions. I The Constitution does not mention unanimous juries. Neither does it mention the presumption of innocence, nor does it say that guilt must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt in all criminal cases. Yet it is almost inconceivable that anyone would have questioned whether proof beyond a reasonable doubt was in fact the constitutional standard. And, indeed, when such a case finally arose we had little difficult disposing of the issue. In re Winship, The Court, speaking through MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN, stated that: "[The] use of the reasonable-doubt standard is indispensable to command the respect and confidence of the community in applications of the criminal law. It is critical that the moral force of the criminal law not be diluted by a standard of proof that leaves people in doubt whether innocent men are being condemned. It is also important in our free society that every individual going about his ordinary affairs have confidence that his government cannot adjudge him guilty of a criminal offense without convincing a proper factfinder of his guilt with utmost certainty. "Lest there remain any doubt about the constitutional stature of the reasonable-doubt standard, we explicitly hold that the Due Process Clause protects the accused against conviction except upon proof beyond a reasonable doubt of every fact necessary to constitute the crime with which he is charged." *382 I had similarly assumed that there was no dispute that the Federal Constitution required a unanimous jury in all criminal cases. After all, it has long been explicit constitutional doctrine that the Seventh Amendment civil jury must be unanimous. See American Publishing where the Court said that "unanimity was one of the peculiar and essential features of trial by jury at the common law. No authorities are needed to sustain this proposition." Like proof beyond a reasonable doubt, the issue of unanimous juries in criminal cases simply never arose. Yet in cases dealing with juries it had always been assumed that a unanimous jury was required.[1] See ; ; *383 748. Today the bases of those cases are discarded and two centuries of American history are shunted aside.[2] The result of today's decisions is anomalous: though unanimous jury decisions are not |
Justice Douglas | 1,972 | 10 | dissenting | Johnson v. Louisiana | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/108538/johnson-v-louisiana/ | today's decisions is anomalous: though unanimous jury decisions are not required in state trials, they are constitutionally required in federal prosecutions. How can that be possible when both decisions stem from the Sixth Amendment? We held unanimously in 1948 that the Bill of Rights requires a unanimous jury verdict: "Unanimity in jury verdicts is required where the Sixth and Seventh Amendments apply. In criminal cases this requirement of unanimity extends to all issuescharacter or degree of the crime, guilt and punishmentwhich are left to the jury. A verdict embodies in a single finding the conclusions by the jury upon all the questions submitted to it." After today's decisions, a man's property may only be taken away by a unanimous jury vote, yet he can be stripped of his liberty by a lesser standard. How can that result be squared with the law of the land as expressed in the settled and traditional requirements of procedural due process? Rule 31 (a) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure states, "The verdict shall be unanimous." That Rule was made by this Court with the concurrence of Congress pursuant to 18 U.S. C. 3771. After today a unanimous verdict will be required in a federal prosecution but not in a state prosecution. Yet the source of the right in each case is the Sixth Amendment. I fail *384 to see how with reason we can maintain those inconsistent dual positions. There have, of course, been advocates of the view that the duties imposed on the by reason of the Bill of Rights operating through the Fourteenth Amendment are a watered-down version of those guarantees. But we held to the contrary in 10-11: "We have held that the guarantees of the First Amendment, Gitlow v. New ; Louisiana ex rel. the prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures of the Fourth Amendment, and the right to counsel guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment, Gideon v. are all to be enforced against the under the Fourteenth Amendment according to the same standards that protect those personal rights against federal encroachment. In the coerced confession cases, involving the policies of the privilege itself, there has been no suggestion that a confession might be considered coerced if used in a federal but not a state tribunal. The Court thus has rejected the notion that the Fourteenth Amendment applies to the only a `watered-down, subjective version of the individual guarantees of the Bill of Rights.' " Malloy, of course, not only applied the Self-Incrimination Clause to the but also stands for the proposition, as mentioned, that "the same standards must |
Justice Douglas | 1,972 | 10 | dissenting | Johnson v. Louisiana | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/108538/johnson-v-louisiana/ | for the proposition, as mentioned, that "the same standards must determine whether an accused's silence in either a federal or state proceeding is justified." See also The equation of federal and state standards for the Self-Incrimination Clause was expressly reaffirmed in Griffin ; and in Similarly, when the Confrontation Clause was finally made obligatory on the Mr. Justice Black for the majority was careful to observe that its guarantee, "like the right against compelled self-incrimination, is `to be enforced against the under the Fourteenth Amendment according to the same standards that protect those personal rights against federal encroachment.' " Cf. Likewise, when we applied the Double Jeopardy Clause against the MR. JUSTICE MARSHALL wrote for the Court that "[o]nce it is decided that a particular Bill of Rights guarantee is `fundamental to the American scheme of justice,' the same constitutional standards apply against both the State and Federal Governments." 5. And, the doctrine of coextensive coverage was followed in holding the Speedy Trial Clause applicable to the And, in 158 n. 30, in holding the jury trial guarantee binding in state trials, we noted that its prohibitions were to be identical against both the Federal and State Governments. See also Only once has this Court diverged from the doctrine of coextensive coverage of guarantees brought within the Fourteenth Amendment, and that aberration was later rectified. In it was held that the Fourth Amendment ban against unreasonable and warrantless searches was enforceable against the but the Court declined to incorporate the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule of Weeks v. United *386 Happily, however, that gap was partially closed in Elkins v. United U.S. 206, and then completely bridged in In Mapp we observed that "[t]his Court has not hesitated to enforce as strictly against the as it does against the Federal Government the rights of free speech and of a free press, the rights to notice and to a fair, public trial" We concluded that "the same rule" should apply where the Fourth Amendment was concerned. And, later, we made clear that "the standard for obtaining a search warrant is `the same under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments,' " 08, ; and that the "standard of reasonableness is the same under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments." It is said, however, that the Sixth Amendment, as applied to the by reason of the Fourteenth, does not mean what it does in federal proceedings, that it has a "due process" gloss on it, and that that gloss gives the power to experiment with the explicit or implied guarantees in the Bill of Rights. Mr. |
Justice Douglas | 1,972 | 10 | dissenting | Johnson v. Louisiana | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/108538/johnson-v-louisiana/ | explicit or implied guarantees in the Bill of Rights. Mr. Justice Holmes, dissenting in and Mr. Justice Brandeis, dissenting in New State Ice thought that the should be allowed to improvise remedies for social and economic ills. But in that area there are not many "thou shalt nots" in the Constitution and Bill of Rights concerning property rights. The most conspicuous is the Just Compensation Clause of the Fifth Amendment. It has been held applicable with full vigor to the by reason of the Fourteenth Amendment. Chicago, B. & Q. R. Do today's decisions mean that may apply a "watered down" version of the Just Compensation *387 Clause? Or are today's decisions limited to a paring down of civil rights protected by the Bill of Rights and up until now as fully applicable to the as to the Federal Government? These civil rightswhether they concern speech, searches and seizures, self-incrimination, criminal prosecutions, bail, or cruel and unusual punishments extend, of course, to everyone, but in cold reality touch mostly the lower castes in our society. I refer, of course, to the blacks, the Chicanos, the one-mule farmers, the agricultural workers, the offbeat students, the victims of the ghetto. Are we giving the the power to experiment in diluting their civil rights? It has long been thought that the "thou shalt nots" in the Constitution and Bill of Rights protect everyone against governmental intrusion or overreaching. The idea has been obnoxious that there are some who can be relegated to second-class citizenship. But if we construe the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment to permit to "experiment" with the basic rights of people, we open a veritable Pandora's box. For hate and prejudice are versatile forces that can degrade the constitutional scheme.[3] *388 That, however, is only one of my concerns when we make the Bill of Rights, as applied to the a "watered down" version of what that charter guarantees. My chief concern is one often expressed by the late Mr. Justice Black, who was alarmed at the prospect of nine men appointed for life sitting as a super-legislative body to determine whether government has gone too far. The balancing was done when the Constitution and Bill of Rights were written and adopted. For this Court to determine, say, whether one person but not another is entitled to free speech is a power never granted it. But that is the ultimate reach of decisions that let the subject to our veto, experiment with rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. I would construe the Sixth Amendment, when applicable to |
Justice Douglas | 1,972 | 10 | dissenting | Johnson v. Louisiana | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/108538/johnson-v-louisiana/ | Rights. I would construe the Sixth Amendment, when applicable to the precisely as I would when applied to the Federal Government. II The plurality approves a procedure which diminishes the reliability of a jury. First, it eliminates the circumstances in which a minority of jurors (a) could have rationally persuaded the entire jury to acquit, or (b) while unable to persuade the majority to acquit, nonetheless could have convinced them to convict only on a lesser-included offense. Second, it permits prosecutors in Oregon and Louisiana to enjoy a conviction-acquittal ratio substantially greater than that ordinarily returned by unanimous juries. The diminution of verdict reliability flows from the fact that nonunanimous juries need not debate and deliberate as fully as must unanimous juries. As soon as the requisite majority is attained, further consideration is not required either by Oregon or by Louisiana even though the dissident jurors might, if given the chance, be able to convince the majority. Such persuasion *389 does in fact occasionally occur in where the unanimous requirement applies: "In roughly one case in ten, the minority eventually succeeds in reversing an initial majority, and these may be cases of special importance."[4] One explanation for this phenomenon is that because jurors are often not permitted to take notes and because they have imperfect memories, the forensic process of forcing jurors to defend their conflicting recollections and conclusions flushes out many nuances which otherwise would go overlooked. This collective effort to piece together the puzzle of historical truth, however, is cut short as soon as the requisite majority is reached in Oregon and Louisiana. Indeed, if a necessary majority is immediately obtained, then no deliberation at all is required in these (There is a suggestion that this may have happened in the 10-2 verdict rendered in only 41 minutes in Apodaca's case.) To be sure, in jurisdictions other than these two initial majorities normally prevail in the end, but about a tenth of the time the rough-and-tumble of the jury room operates to reverse completely their preliminary perception of guilt or innocence. The Court now extracts from the jury room this automatic check against hasty factfinding by relieving jurors of the duty to hear out fully the dissenters. It is said that there is no evidence that majority jurors will refuse to listen to dissenters whose votes are unneeded for conviction. Yet human experience teaches that polite and academic conversation is no substitute for the earnest and robust argument necessary to reach unanimity. As mentioned earlier, in Apodaca's case, whatever courtesy dialogue transpired could not have lasted more than |
Justice Douglas | 1,972 | 10 | dissenting | Johnson v. Louisiana | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/108538/johnson-v-louisiana/ | whatever courtesy dialogue transpired could not have lasted more than 41 minutes. I fail to understand *390 why the Court should lift from the the burden of justifying so radical a departure from an accepted and applauded tradition and instead demand that these defendants document with empirical evidence what has always been thought to be too obvious for further study. To be sure, in we held that a State could provide a jury less than 12 in number in a criminal trial. We said: "What few experiments have occurredusually in the civil areaindicate that there is no discernible difference between the results reached by the two different-sized juries. In short, neither currently available evidence nor theory suggests that the 12-man jury is necessarily more advantageous to the defendant than a jury composed of fewer members." That rationale of Williams can have no application here. Williams requires that the change be neither more nor less advantageous to either the State or the defendant. It is said that such a showing is satisfied here since a 3:9 (Louisiana) or 2:10 (Oregon) verdict will result in acquittal. Yet experience shows that the less-than-unanimous jury overwhelmingly favors the Moreover, even where an initial majority wins the dissent over to its side, the ultimate result in unanimous-jury may nonetheless reflect the reservations of uncertain jurors. I refer to many compromise verdicts on lesser-included offenses and lesser sentences. Thus, even though a minority may not be forceful enough to carry the day, their doubts may nonetheless cause a majority to exercise caution. Obviously, however, in Oregon and Louisiana, dissident jurors will not have the opportunity through full deliberation to temper the opposing faction's degree of certainty of The new rule also has an impact on cases in which a unanimous jury would have neither voted to acquit nor *391 to convict, but would have deadlocked. In unanimous-jury this occurs about 5.6% of the time. Of these deadlocked juries, Kalven and Zeisel say that 56% contain either one, two, or three dissenters. In these latter cases, the majorities favor the prosecution 44% (of the 56%) but the defendant only 12% (of the 56%).[5] Thus, by eliminating these deadlocks, Louisiana wins 44 cases for every 12 that it loses, obtaining in this band of outcomes a substantially more favorable conviction ratio (3.67 to 1) than the unanimous-jury ratio of slightly less than two guilty verdicts for every acquittal. H. Kalven & H. Zeisel, The American Jury 461, 488 (Table 139) (1966). By eliminating the one-and-two-dissenting-juror cases, Oregon does even better, gaining 4.25 convictions for every acquittal. While the |
Justice Douglas | 1,972 | 10 | dissenting | Johnson v. Louisiana | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/108538/johnson-v-louisiana/ | even better, gaining 4.25 convictions for every acquittal. While the statutes on their face deceptively appear to be neutral, the use of the nonunanimous jury stacks the truth-determining process against the accused. Thus, we take one step more away from the accusatorial system that has been our proud boast. It is my belief that a unanimous jury is necessary if the great barricade known as proof beyond a reasonable *392 doubt is to be maintained. This is not to equate proof beyond a reasonable doubt with the requirement of a unanimous jury. That would be analytically fallacious since a deadlocked jury does not bar, as double jeopardy, retrial for the same offense. See Nevertheless, one is necessary for a proper effectuation of the other. Compare with Suppose a jury begins with a substantial minority but then in the process of deliberation a sufficient number changes to reach the required 9:3 or 10:2 for a verdict. Is not there still a lingering doubt about that verdict? Is it not clear that the safeguard of unanimity operates in this context to make it far more likely that guilt is established beyond a reasonable doubt? The late Learned Hand said that "as a litigant I should dread a lawsuit beyond almost anything else short of sickness and death."[6] At the criminal level that dread multiplies. Any person faced with the awesome power of government is in great jeopardy, even though innocent. Facts are always elusive and often two-faced. What may appear to one to imply guilt may carry no such overtones to another. Every criminal prosecution crosses treacherous ground, for guilt is common to all men. Yet the guilt of one may be irrelevant to the charge on which he is tried or indicate that if there is to be a penalty, it should be of an extremely light character. The risk of loss of his liberty and the certainty that if found guilty he will be "stigmatized by the conviction" were factors we emphasized in Winship in sustaining the requirement that no man should be condemned where there is reasonable doubt about his -. *393 We therefore have always held that in criminal cases we would err on the side of letting the guilty go free rather than sending the innocent to jail. We have required proof beyond a reasonable doubt as "concrete substance for the presumption of innocence." That procedure has required a degree of patience on the part of the jurors, forcing them to deliberate in order to reach a unanimous verdict. Up until today the price has never seemed |
Justice Douglas | 1,972 | 10 | dissenting | Johnson v. Louisiana | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/108538/johnson-v-louisiana/ | unanimous verdict. Up until today the price has never seemed too high. Now a "law and order" judicial mood causes these barricades to be lowered. The requirements of a unanimous jury verdict in criminal cases and proof beyond a reasonable doubt are so embedded in our constitutional law and touch so directly all the citizens and are such important barricades of liberty that if they are to be changed they should be introduced by constitutional amendment. Today the Court approves a nine-to-three verdict. Would the Court relax the standard of reasonable doubt still further by resorting to eight-to-four verdicts, or even a majority rule? Moreover, in light of today's holdings and that of in the future would it invalidate three-to-two or even two-to-one convictions? Is the next step the elimination of the presumption of innocence? Mr. Justice Frankfurter, writing in dissent in 343 U.S. 0, said: "It is not unthinkable that failure to bring the guilty to book for a heinous crime which deeply stirs popular sentiment may lead the legislature of a State, in one of those emotional storms which on occasion sweep over our people, to enact that thereafter an indictment for murder, following attempted rape, should be presumptive proof of guilt and cast upon the defendant the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that he did not do the killing. Can there be any doubt that such a statute would go beyond *394 the freedom of the under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, to fashion their own penal codes and their own procedures for enforcing them? Why is that so? Because from the time that the law which we have inherited has emerged from dark and barbaric times, the conception of justice which has dominated our criminal law has refused to put an accused at the hazard of punishment if he fails to remove every reasonable doubt of his innocence in the minds of jurors. It is the duty of the Government to establish his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. This notionbasic in our law and rightly one of the boasts of a free societyis a requirement and a safeguard of due process of law in the historic, procedural content of `due process.' Accordingly there can be no doubt, I repeat, that a State cannot cast upon an accused the duty of establishing beyond a reasonable doubt that his was not the act which caused the death of another." The vast restructuring of American law which is entailed in today's decisions is for political not for judicial action. Until the Constitution is rewritten, |
Justice O'Connor | 1,988 | 14 | concurring | Thompson v. Thompson | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/111974/thompson-v-thompson/ | For the reasons expressed by JUSTICE SCALIA in Part I of his opinion in this case, I join all but the first full paragraph of Part II of the Court's opinion and judgment. JUSTICE SCALIA, concurring in the judgment. I write separately because in my view the Court is not being faithful to current doctrine in its dicta denying the necessity of an actual congressional intent to create a private right of action, and in referring to as though its analysis had not been effectively overruled by our later opinions. I take the opportunity to suggest, at the same time, why in my view the law revision that the Court's dicta would undertake moves in precisely the wrong direction. I I agree that the Parental Kidnaping Prevention Act, 28 U.S. C. 1738A, does not create a private right of action in federal court to determine which of two conflicting child custody decrees is valid. I disagree, however, with the portion of the Court's analysis that flows from the following statement: "Our focus on congressional intent does not mean that we require evidence that Members of Congress, in enacting the statute, actually had in mind the creation of a private cause of action." Ante, at 179. I am at a loss to imagine what congressional intent to create a private right of action might mean, if it does not mean that Congress had in mind the creation of a private right of action. Our precedents, moreover, give no indication of a secret meaning, but to the contrary seem to use "intent" to mean "intent." For example: *9 "[T]he focus of the inquiry is on whether Congress intended to create a remedy. Universities Research Assn., Inc. v. -772; Mortgage Advisors, Inc. v. -24; Touche & [442 U. S.], at The federal judiciary will not engraft a remedy on a statute, no matter how salutary, that Congress did not intend to provide." We have said, to be sure, that the existence of intent may be inferred from various indicia; but that is worlds apart from today's Delphic pronouncement that intent is required but need not really exist. I also find misleading the Court's statement that, in determining the existence of a private right of action, "we have relied on the four factors set out in along with other tools of statutory construction." Ante, at 179. That is not an accurate description of what we have done. It could not be plainer that we effectively overruled the analysis in Touche & and Mortgage Advisors, Inc. v. converting one of its four factors (congressional intent) |
Justice O'Connor | 1,988 | 14 | concurring | Thompson v. Thompson | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/111974/thompson-v-thompson/ | Inc. v. converting one of its four factors (congressional intent) into the determinative factor, with the other three merely indicative of its presence or absence. Compare with Finally, the Court's opinion conveys a misleading impression of current law when it proceeds to examine the "context" of the legislation for indication of intent to create a private right of action, after having found no such indication in either text or legislative history. In my view that examination is entirely superfluous, since context alone cannot suffice. We have held context to be relevant to our determination in only two cases both of which involved statutory language that, in the judicial interpretation of related legislation prior to the subject statute's enactment, or of the same legislation prior *190 to its reenactment, had been held to create private rights of action. See ; Merrill Pierce, Fenner & Smith, Since this is not a case where such textual support exists, or even where there is any support in legislative history, the "context" of the enactment is immaterial. Contrary to what the language of today's opinion suggests, this Court has long since abandoned its hospitable attitude towards implied rights of action. In the 23 years since Justice Clark's opinion for the court in J. I. Case we have twice narrowed the test for implying a private right, first in itself, and then again in Touche & and Mortgage Advisers, Inc. v. See also and The recent history of our holdings is one of repeated rejection of claims of an implied right. This has been true in 9 of 11 recent private right of action cases heard by this Court, including the instant case. See Touche Universities Research Assn., Inc. v. ; Northwest Airlines, ; Texas Industries, ; Middlesex County Sewerage 13- ; Daily Income Fund, ; and Massachusetts Mut. Life Ins. But see Merrill and The Court's opinion exaggerates the difficulty of establishing an implied right when it surmises that "[t]he implied cause of action doctrine would be a virtual dead letter were it limited to correcting drafting errors when Congress simply forgot to codify its evident intention to provide a *191 cause of action." Ante, at 179. That statement rests upon the erroneous premise that one never implies anything except when he forgets to say it expressly. It is true, however, that the congressional intent test for implying private rights of action as it has evolved since the repudiation of is much more stringent than the Court's dicta in the present case suggest. II I have found the Court's dicta in the present case |
Justice O'Connor | 1,988 | 14 | concurring | Thompson v. Thompson | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/111974/thompson-v-thompson/ | I have found the Court's dicta in the present case particularly provocative of response because it is my view that, if the current state of the law were to be changed, it should be moved in precisely the opposite direction away from our current congressional intent test to the categorical position that federal private rights of action will not be implied. As Justice Powell observed in his dissent in -731: "Under Art. III, Congress alone has the responsibility for determining the jurisdiction of the lower federal courts. As the Legislative Branch, Congress also should determine when private parties are to be given causes of action under legislation it adopts. As countless statutes demonstrate, including Titles of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Congress recognizes that the creation of private actions is a legislative function and frequently exercises it. When Congress chooses not to provide a private civil remedy, federal courts should not assume the legislative role of creating such a remedy and thereby enlarge their jurisdiction." (Footnote omitted.) It is, to be sure, not beyond imagination that in a particular case Congress may intend to create a private right of action, but chooses to do so by implication. One must wonder, however, whether the good produced by a judicial rule that accommodates this remote possibility is outweighed by its adverse effects. An enactment by implication cannot realistically be regarded as the product of the difficult lawmaking process our Constitution has prescribed. Committee reports, *192 floor speeches, and even colloquies between Congressmen, ante, at 4-5, are frail substitutes for bicameral vote upon the text of a law and its presentment to the President. See generally It is at best dangerous to assume that all the necessary participants in the law-enactment process are acting upon the same unexpressed assumptions. And likewise dangerous to assume that, even with the utmost self-discipline, judges can prevent the implications they see from mirroring the policies they favor. I suppose all this could be said, to a greater or lesser degree, of all implications that courts derive from statutory language, which are assuredly numerous as the stars. But as the likelihood that Congress would leave the matter to implication decreases, so does the justification for bearing the risk of distorting the constitutional process. A legislative act so significant, and so separable from the remainder of the statute, as the creation of a private right of action seems to me so implausibly left to implication that the risk should not be endured. If we were to announce a flat rule that private rights of action will not |
Justice Stevens | 1,993 | 16 | dissenting | Graham v. Collins | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/112810/graham-v-collins/ | Neither the race of the defendant nor the race of the victim should play a part in any decision to impose a death sentence. As Justice Thomas points out, there is reason to believe that this imperative was routinely violated in the *501 years before the Court first held that capital punishment may violate the Eighth Amendment, when racial discrimination infected the administration of the death penalty "particularly in Southern States, and most particularly in rape cases." Ante, at 479 (concurring opinion). And Justice Thomas is surely correct that concern about racial discrimination played a significant role in the development of our modern capital sentencing jurisprudence. Ante, at 479 484. Where I cannot agree with Justice Thomas is in the remarkable suggestion that the Court's decision in somehow threatens what progress we have made in eliminating racial discrimination and other arbitrary considerations from the capital sentencing determination. In recent years, the Court's capital punishment cases have erected four important safeguards against arbitrary imposition of the death penalty. First, notwithstanding a minority view that proportionality should play no part in our analysis,[1] we have concluded that death is an impermissible punishment for certain offenses. Specifically, neither the crime of rape nor the kind of unintentional homicide referred to by Justice Thomas, ante, at 485, may now support a death sentence. See ; Second, as a corollary to the proportionality requirement, the Court has demanded that the States narrow the class of individuals eligible for the death penalty, either through statutory definitions of capital murder, or through statutory specification of aggravating circumstances. This narrowing requirement, like the categorical exclusion of the offense of rape, has significantly minimized the risk of racial bias in the sentencing process.[2] Indeed, as I pointed out in my dissent *502 in there is strong empirical evidence that an adequate narrowing of the class of death-eligible offenders would eradicate any significant risk of bias in the imposition of the death penalty.[3] Third, the Court has condemned the use of aggravating factors so vague that they actually enhance the risk that unguided discretion will control the sentencing determination. See, e. g., ; An aggravating factor that invites a judgment as to whether a murder committed by a member of another race is especially "heinous" or "inhuman" may increase, rather than decrease, the chance of arbitrary decisionmaking, by creating room for the influence of personal prejudices. In my view, it is just such aggravating factors, which fail to cabin sentencer discretion *503 in the determination of death eligibility, that pose the "evident danger" of which Justice Thomas warns. See ante, |
Justice Stevens | 1,993 | 16 | dissenting | Graham v. Collins | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/112810/graham-v-collins/ | the "evident danger" of which Justice Thomas warns. See ante, at 479. Finally, at the end of the process, when dealing with the narrow class of offenders deemed death eligible, we insist that the sentencer be permitted to give effect to all relevant mitigating evidence offered by the defendant, in making the final sentencing determination. See, e. g., ; I have already explained my view that once the class of death-eligible offenders is sufficiently narrowed, consideration of relevant, individual mitigating circumstances in no way compromises the "rationalizing principle," ante, at 490 (Thomas, J., concurring), of See To the contrary, the requirement that sentencing decisions be guided by consideration of relevant mitigating evidence reduces still further the chance that the decision will be based on irrelevant factors such as race. Lockett itself illustrates this point. A young black woman,[4] Lockett was sentenced to death because the Ohio statute "did not permit the sentencing judge to consider, as mitigating factors, her character, prior record, age, lack of specific intent to cause death, and her relatively minor part in the crime." When such relevant facts are excluded from the sentencing determination, there is more, not less, reason to believe that the sentencer will be left to rely on irrational considerations like racial animus. I remain committed to our "mitigating" line of precedent, as a critical protection against arbitrary and discriminatory capital sentencing that is fully consonant with the principles of Furman. Nothing in Justice Thomas' opinion explains *504 why the requirement that sentencing decisions be based on relevant mitigating evidence, as applied by Penry, increases the risk that those decisions will be based on the irrelevant factor of race. More specifically, I do not see how permitting full consideration of a defendant's mental retardation and history of childhood abuse, as in Penry, or of a defendant's youth, as in this case, in any way increases the risk of race-based or otherwise arbitrary decisionmaking. Justice Souter, in whose dissent I join, has demonstrated that the decision in Penry is completely consistent with our capital sentencing jurisprudence. In my view, it is also faithful to the goal of eradicating racial discrimination in capital sentencing, which I share with Justice Thomas. |
Justice Souter | 2,000 | 20 | dissenting | United States v. Morrison | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/118363/united-states-v-morrison/ | The Court says both that it leaves Commerce Clause precedent undisturbed and that the Civil Rights Remedy of the Violence Against Women Act of 4, 42 U.S. C. 11, exceeds Congress's power under that Clause. I find the claims irreconcilable and respectfully dissent.[1] I Our cases, which remain at least nominally undisturbed, stand for the following propositions. Congress has the power to legislate with regard to activity that, in the aggregate, has a substantial effect on interstate commerce. See ; The fact of such a substantial effect is not an issue for the courts in the first instance, but for the Congress, whose institutional capacity for gathering evidence and taking testimony far exceeds ours. By passing legislation, Congress indicates its conclusion, whether explicitly or not, that facts support its exercise of the commerce power. The business of the courts is to review the congressional assessment, not for soundness but simply for the rationality of concluding that a jurisdictional basis exists in fact. See Any explicit findings that Congress chooses to make, though not dispositive of the question of rationality, may advance judicial review by identifying factual authority on which Congress relied. Applying those propositions in these cases can lead to only one conclusion. One obvious difference from United is the mountain of data assembled by Congress, *629 here showing the effects of violence against women on interstate commerce.[2] Passage of the Act in 4 was preceded by four years of hearings,[3] which included testimony from physicians and law professors;[4] from survivors *630 of rape and domestic violence;[5] and from representatives of state law enforcement and private business.[6] The record includes reports on gender bias from task forces in 21[7] and we have the benefit of specific factual findings *631 in the eight separate Reports issued by Congress and its committees over the long course leading to enactment.[8] Cf. -279 With respect to domestic violence, Congress received evidence for the following findings: "Three out of four American women will be victims of violent crimes sometime during their life." H. R. Rep. No. 103-395, p. 25 (3) (citing U. S. Dept. of Justice, Report to the Nation on Crime and Justice 29 (2d ed. 1988)). "Violence is the leading cause of injuries to women ages 15 to 44" S. Rep. No. 103-138, p. 38 (3) ). "[A]s many as 50 percent of homeless women and children are fleeing domestic violence." S. Rep. No. 101 545, p. 37 (0) (citing E. Legal Reform Efforts for Battered Women: Past, Present, and Future (July 0)). "Since 1974, the assault rate against women has outstripped the |
Justice Souter | 2,000 | 20 | dissenting | United States v. Morrison | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/118363/united-states-v-morrison/ | "Since 1974, the assault rate against women has outstripped the rate for men by at least twice for some age groups and far more for others." S. Rep. No. 101 *632 545, at 30 (citing Bureau of Justice Statistics, Criminal Victimization in the United (1974) (Table 5)). "[B]attering `is the single largest cause of injury to women in the United' " S. Rep. No. 101-545, at 37 (quoting Van Hightower & McManus, Limits of State Constitutional Guarantees: Lessons from Efforts to Implement Domestic Violence Policies, 49 Pub. Admin. Rev. 269 (May/June 1989). "An estimated 4 million American women are battered each year by their husbands or partners." H. R. Rep. No. 103-395, at 26 "Over 1 million women in the United seek medical assistance each year for injuries sustained [from] their husbands or other partners." S. Rep. No. 101 545, at 37 (citing Stark & Flitcraft, Medical Therapy as Repression: The Case of the Battered Woman, Health & Medicine (Summer/Fall 1982). "Between 2,000 and 4,000 women die every year from [domestic] abuse." S. Rep. No. 101-545, at 36 (citing ). "[A]rrest rates may be as low as 1 for every 100 domestic assaults." S. Rep. No. 101-545, at 38 (citing Dutton, Profiling of Wife Assaulters: Preliminary Evidence for Trimodal Analysis, 3 Violence and Victims 5-30 (1988)). "Partial estimates show that violent crime against women costs this country at least 3 billionnot million, but billiondollars a year." S. Rep. No. 101-545, at 33 (citing ). "[E]stimates suggest that we spend $5 to $10 billion a year on health care, criminal justice, and other social costs of domestic violence." S. Rep. No. 103-138, at *633 41 (citing Biden, Domestic Violence: A Crime, Not a Quarrel, Trial 56 (June 3)). The evidence as to rape was similarly extensive, supporting these conclusions: "[The incidence of] rape rose four times as fast as the total national crime rate over the past 10 years." S. Rep. No. 101-545, at 30 (citing Federal Bureau of Investigation Uniform Crime Reports (1988)). "According to one study, close to half a million girls now in high school will be raped before they graduate." S. Rep. No. 101-545, at 31 (citing R. Warshaw, I Never Called it Rape 117 (1988)). "[One hundred twenty-five thousand] college women can expect to be raped during thisor anyyear." S. Rep. No. 101-545, 3 (citing testimony of Dr. Mary Koss before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Aug. 29, 0). "[T]hree-quarters of women never go to the movies alone after dark because of the fear of rape and nearly 50 percent do not use public transit alone after |
Justice Souter | 2,000 | 20 | dissenting | United States v. Morrison | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/118363/united-states-v-morrison/ | nearly 50 percent do not use public transit alone after dark for the same reason." S. Rep. No. 102-197, p. 38 (1) (citing M. Gordon & S. Riger, The Female Fear 15 (1989)). "[Forty-one] percent of judges surveyed believed that juries give sexual assault victims less credibility than other crime victims." S. Rep. No. 102-197, 7 (citing Colorado Supreme Court Task Force on Gender Bias in the Courts, Gender & Justice in the Colorado Courts 91 (0)). "Less than 1 percent of all [rape] victims have collected damages." S. Rep. No. 102-197, 4 (citing report by Jury Verdict Research, Inc.). "`[A]n individual who commits rape has only about 4 chances in 100 of being arrested, prosecuted, and found guilty of any offense.' " S. Rep. No. 101-545, at 33, n. 30 *634 (quoting H. Feild & L. Bienen, Jurors and Rape: A Study in Psychology and Law 95 (1980)). "Almost one-quarter of convicted rapists never go to prison and another quarter received sentences in local jails where the average sentence is 11 months." S. Rep. No. 103-138, at 38 (citing Majority Staff Report of Senate Committee on the Judiciary, The Response to Rape: Detours on the Road to Equal Justice, 103d Cong., 1st Sess., 2 (Comm. Print 3)). "[A]lmost 50 percent of rape victims lose their jobs or are forced to quit because of the crime's severity." S. Rep. No. 102-197, at 53 Based on the data thus partially summarized, Congress found that "crimes of violence motivated by gender have a substantial adverse effect on interstate commerce, by deterring potential victims from traveling interstate, from engaging in employment in interstate business, and from transacting with business, and in places involved, in interstate commerce [,] by diminishing national productivity, increasing medical and other costs, and decreasing the supply of and the demand for interstate products" H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 103-711, p. 385 (4). Congress thereby explicitly stated the predicate for the exercise of its Commerce Clause power. Is its conclusion irrational in view of the data amassed? True, the methodology of particular studies may be challenged, and some of the figures arrived at may be disputed. But the sufficiency of the evidence before Congress to provide a rational basis for the finding cannot seriously be questioned. Cf. Turner Broadcasting System, *635 ("The Constitution gives to Congress the role of weighing conflicting evidence in the legislative process"). Indeed, the legislative record here is far more voluminous than the record compiled by Congress and found sufficient in two prior cases upholding Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 against Commerce |
Justice Souter | 2,000 | 20 | dissenting | United States v. Morrison | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/118363/united-states-v-morrison/ | II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 against Commerce Clause challenges. In Heart of Motel, and the Court referred to evidence showing the consequences of racial discrimination by motels and restaurants on interstate commerce. Congress had relied on compelling anecdotal reports that individual instances of segregation cost thousands to millions of dollars. See Civil RightsPublic Accommodations, Hearings on S. 1732 before the Senate Committee on Commerce, 88th Cong., 1st Sess., App. V, pp. 1383-1387 (1963). Congress also had evidence that the average black family spent substantially less than the average white family in the same income range on public accommodations, and that discrimination accounted for much of the difference. H. R. Rep. No. 88-914, pt. 2,pp. 9-10, and Table II (1963) (Additional Views on H. R. 7152 of Hon. William M. McCulloch, Hon. John V. Lindsay, Hon. William T. Cahill, Hon. Garner E. Shriver, Hon. Clark MacGregor, Hon. Charles McC. Mathias, Hon. James E. Bromwell). While Congress did not, to my knowledge, calculate aggregate dollar values for the nationwide effects of racial discrimination in 1964, in 4 it did rely on evidence of the harms caused by domestic violence and sexual assault, citing annual costs of $3 billion in 0, see S. Rep. 101-545, at 33, and $5 to $10 billion in 3, see S. Rep. No. 103-138, 1.[9] Equally important, though, gender-based violence in the 0's was shown to operate in a manner similar to racial *636 discrimination in the 1960's in reducing the mobility of employees and their production and consumption of goods shipped in interstate commerce. Like racial discrimination, "[g]ender-based violence bars its most likely targets womenfrom full partic[ipation] in the national economy." If the analogy to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is not plain enough, one can always look back a bit further. In Wickard, we upheld the application of the Agricultural Adjustment Act to the planting and consumption of homegrown wheat. The effect on interstate commerce in that case followed from the possibility that wheat grown at home for personal consumption could either be drawn into the market by rising prices, or relieve its grower of any need to purchase wheat in the market. See -129. The Commerce Clause predicate was simply the effect of the production of wheat for home consumption on supply and demand in interstate commerce. Supply and demand for goods in interstate commerce will also be affected by the deaths of 2,000 to 4,000 women annually at the hands of domestic abusers, see S. Rep. No. 101-545, at 36, and by the reduction in the work force by the |
Justice Souter | 2,000 | 20 | dissenting | United States v. Morrison | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/118363/united-states-v-morrison/ | and by the reduction in the work force by the 100,000 or more rape victims who lose their jobs each year or are forced to quit, see ; H. R. Rep. No. 103-395, at 25-26. Violence against women may be found to affect interstate commerce and affect it substantially.[10] *637 II The Act would have passed muster at any time between Wickard in 1942 and in 5, a period in which the law enjoyed a stable understanding that congressional power under the Commerce Clause, complemented by the authority of the Necessary and Proper Clause, Art. I, 8, cl. 18, extended to all activity that, when aggregated, has a substantial effect on interstate commerce. As already noted, this understanding was secure even against the turmoil at the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, in the aftermath of which the Court not only reaffirmed the cumulative effects and rational basis features of the substantial effects test, see Heart of ; but declined to limit the commerce power through a formal distinction between legislation focused on "commerce" and statutes addressing "moral and social wrong[s]," Heart of The fact that the Act does not pass muster before the Court today is therefore proof, to a degree that was not, that the Court's nominal adherence to the substantial effects test is merely that. Although a new jurisprudence has not emerged with any distinctness, it is clear that some congressional conclusions about obviously substantial, cumulative effects on commerce are being assigned lesser values than the once-stable doctrine would assign them. These devaluations are accomplished not by any express repudiation of the substantial effects test or its application through the aggregation of individual conduct, but by supplanting rational basis scrutiny with a new criterion of review. *638 Thus the elusive heart of the majority's analysis in these cases is its statement that Congress's findings of fact are "weakened" by the presence of a disfavored "method of reasoning." Ante, at 615. This seems to suggest that the "substantial effects" analysis is not a factual enquiry, for Congress in the first instance with subsequent judicial review looking only to the rationality of the congressional conclusion, but one of a rather different sort, dependent upon a uniquely judicial competence. This new characterization of substantial effects has no support inour cases (the self-fulfilling prophecies of aside), least of all those the majority cites. Perhaps this explains why the majority is not content to rest on its cited precedent but claims a textual justification for moving toward its new system of congressional deference subject to selective discounts. Thus it purports |
Justice Souter | 2,000 | 20 | dissenting | United States v. Morrison | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/118363/united-states-v-morrison/ | of congressional deference subject to selective discounts. Thus it purports to rely on the sensible and traditional understanding that the listing in the Constitution of some powers implies the exclusion of others unmentioned. See ; ante, at 610; The Federalist No. 45, p. 313 (J. Cooke ed. 1961) (J. Madison).[11] The majority stresses that Art. I, 8,enumerates *639 the powers of Congress, including the commerce power, an enumeration implying the exclusion of powers not enumerated. It follows, for the majority, not only that there must be some limits to "commerce," but that some particular subjects arguably within the commerce power can be identified in advance as excluded, on the basis of characteristics other than their commercial effects. Such exclusions come into sight when the activity regulated is not itself commercial or when the have traditionally addressed it in the exercise of the general police power, conferred under the state constitutions but never extended to Congress under the Constitution of the Nation, see 514 U. S., 6. Ante, at 615-616. The premise that the enumeration of powers implies that other powers are withheld is sound; the conclusion that some particular categories of subject matter are therefore presumptively beyond the reach of the commerce power is, however, a non sequitur. From the fact that Art. I, 8, cl. 3, grants an authority limited to regulating commerce, it follows only that Congress may claim no authority under that section to address any subject that does not affect commerce. It does not at all follow that an activity affecting commerce nonetheless falls outside the commerce power, depending on the specific character of the activity, or the authority of a State to regulate it along with Congress.[12] My disagreement *640 with the majority is not, however, confined to logic, for history has shown that categorical exclusions have proven as unworkable in practice as they are unsupportable in theory. A Obviously, it would not be inconsistent with the text of the Commerce Clause itself to declare "noncommercial" primary activity beyond or presumptively beyond the scope of the commerce power. That variant of categorical approach is not, however, the sole textually permissible way of defining the scope of the Commerce Clause, and any such neat limitation would at least be suspect in the light of the final sentence of Art. I, 8, authorizing Congress to make "all Laws necessary and proper" to give effect to its enumerated powers such as commerce. See United ("The power of Congress extends to those activities intrastate which so affect interstate commerce or the exercise of the power of Congress over it |
Justice Souter | 2,000 | 20 | dissenting | United States v. Morrison | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/118363/united-states-v-morrison/ | or the exercise of the power of Congress over it as to make regulation of them appropriate means to the attainment of a legitimate end, the exercise of the granted power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce"). Accordingly, for significant periods of our history, the Court has defined the commerce power as plenary, unsusceptible to categorical exclusions, and this was the view expressed throughout the latter part of the 20th century in the substantial effects test. These two conceptions of the commerce power, plenary and categorically limited, are in fact old rivals, and today's revival of their competition summons up familiar history, a brief reprise of which may be helpful in posing what I take to be the key question going to the legitimacy of the majority's decision to breathe new life into the approach of categorical limitation. *641 Chief Justice Marshall's seminal opinion in -194, construed the commerce power from the start with "a breadth never yet exceeded," In particular, it is worth noting, the Court in Wickard did not regard its holding as exceeding the scope of Chief Justice Marshall's view of interstate commerce; Wickard applied an aggregate effects test to ostensibly domestic, noncommercial farming consistently with Chief Justice Marshall's indication that the commerce power may be understood by its exclusion of subjects, among others, "which do not affect other" Gibbons, 9 Wheat., at This plenary view of the power has either prevailed or been acknowledged by this Court at every stage of our jurisprudence. See, e. g., ; Nashville, C. & St. L. R. ; Lottery Case, ; Minnesota Rate Cases, ; United ; United ; Heart of Motel, ; v. And it was this understanding, free of categorical qualifications, that prevailed in the period after 1937 through as summed up by Justice Harlan: "`Of course, the mere fact that Congress has said when particular activity shall be deemed to affect commerce does not preclude further examination by this Court. But where we find that the legislators have a rational basis for finding a chosen regulatory scheme necessary to the protection of commerce, our investigation is at an end.' " (quoting -304). Justice Harlan spoke with the benefit of hindsight, for he had seen the result of rejecting the plenary view, and today's attempt to distinguish between primary activities affecting commerce in terms of the relatively commercial or noncommercial character of the primary conduct proscribed comes with the pedigree of near tragedy that I outlined in *642 United In the half century following the modern activation of the commerce power with passage of the Interstate Commerce Act |
Justice Souter | 2,000 | 20 | dissenting | United States v. Morrison | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/118363/united-states-v-morrison/ | the commerce power with passage of the Interstate Commerce Act in 1887, this Court from time to time created categorical enclaves beyond congressional reach by declaring such activities as "mining," "production," "manufacturing," and union membership to be outside the definition of "commerce" and by limiting application of the effects test to "direct" rather than "indirect" commercial consequences. See, e. g., United v. E. C. Knight Co., ; In re Heff, (5) ; The Employers' Liability Cases, (8) ; Adair v. United (8) ; ; A. L. A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United ; Railroad Retirement ; Since adherence to these formalistically contrived confines of commerce power in large measure provoked the judicial crisis of 1937, one might reasonably have doubted that Members of this Court would ever again toy with a return to the days before which brought the earlier and nearly disastrous experiment to an end. And yet today's decision can only be seen as a step toward recapturing the prior mistakes. Its revival of a distinction between commercial and noncommercial conduct is at odds with Wickard, which repudiated that analysis, and the enquiry into commercial purpose, first intimated by the concurrence, see is cousin to the intent-based analysis employed in at 271 272, but rejected for Commerce Clause purposes in Heart of and 312 U. S., Why is the majority tempted to reject the lesson so painfully learned in 1937? An answer emerges from contrasting Wickard with one of the predecessor cases it superseded. It was obvious in Wickard that growing wheat for consumption right on the farm was not "commerce" in the common vocabulary,[13] but that did not matter constitutionally so long as the aggregated activity of domestic wheat growing affected commerce substantially. Just a few years before *644 Wickard, however, it had certainly been no less obvious that "mining" practices could substantially affect commerce, even though Carter Coal Co., had held mining regulation beyond the national commerce power. When we try to fathom the difference between the two cases, it is clear that they did not go in different directions because the Carter Coal Court could not understand a causal connection that the Wickard Court could grasp; the difference, rather, turned on the fact that the Court in Carter Coal had a reason for trying to maintain its categorical, formalistic distinction, while that reason had been abandoned by the time Wickard was decided. The reason was laissez-faire economics, the point of which was to keep government interference to a minimum. See The Court in Carter Coal was still trying to create a laissez-faire world out of |
Justice Souter | 2,000 | 20 | dissenting | United States v. Morrison | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/118363/united-states-v-morrison/ | was still trying to create a laissez-faire world out of the 20thcentury economy, and formalistic commercial distinctions were thought to be useful instruments in achieving that object. The Court in Wickard knew it could not do any such thing and in the aftermath of the New Deal had long since stopped attempting the impossible. Without the animating economic theory, there was no point in contriving formalisms in a war with Chief Justice Marshall's conception of the commerce power. If we now ask why the formalistic economic/noneconomic distinction might matter today, after its rejection in Wickard, the answer is not that the majority fails to see causal connections in an integrated economic world. The answer is that in the minds of the majority there is a new animating theory that makes categorical formalism seem useful again. Just as the old formalism had value in the service of an economic conception, the new one is useful in serving a conception of federalism. It is the instrument by which assertions of national power are to be limited in favor of preserving a supposedly discernible, proper sphere of state autonomy to legislate or refrain from legislating as the individual *645 see fit. The legitimacy of the Court's current emphasis on the noncommercial nature of regulated activity, then, does not turn on any logic serving the text of the Commerce Clause or on the realism of the majority's view of the national economy. The essential issue is rather the strength of the majority's claim to have a constitutional warrant for its current conception of a federal relationship enforceable by this Court through limits on otherwise plenary commerce power. This conception is the subject of the majority's second categorical discount applied today to the facts bearing on the substantial effects test. B The Court finds it relevant that the statute addresses conduct traditionally subject to state prohibition under domestic criminal law, a fact said to have some heightened significance when the violent conduct in question is not itself aimed directly at interstate commerce or its instrumentalities. Ante, at 609. Again, history seems to be recycling, for the theory of traditional state concern as grounding a limiting principle has been rejected previously, and more than once. It was disapproved in -124, and held insufficient standing alone to limit the commerce power in -. In the particular context of the Fair Labor Standards Act it was rejected in with the recognition that "[t]here is no general doctrine implied in the Federal Constitution that the two governments, national and state, are each to exercise its powers so as not |
Justice Souter | 2,000 | 20 | dissenting | United States v. Morrison | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/118363/united-states-v-morrison/ | state, are each to exercise its powers so as not to interfere with the free and full exercise of the powers of the " at The Court held it to be "clear that the Federal Government, when acting within a delegated power, may override countervailing state interests, whether these be described as `governmental' or `proprietary' in character." While Wirtz was later overruled by National League of Cities v. 426 U. S. *646 833 (1976), that case was itself repudiated in which held that the concept of "traditional governmental function" (as an element of the immunity doctrine under ) was incoherent, there being no explanation that would make sense of the multifarious decisions placing some functions on one side of the line, some on the 469 U.S., 6-547. The effort to carve out inviolable state spheres within the spectrum of activities substantially affecting commerce was, of course, just as irreconcilable with Gibbons `s explanation of the national commerce power as being as "absolut[e] as it would be in a single government," 9 Wheat.,[14] *647 The objection to reviving traditional state spheres of action as a consideration in commerce analysis, however, not only rests on the portent of incoherence, but is compounded by a further defect just as fundamental. The defect, in essence, is the majority's rejection of the Founders' considered judgment that politics, not judicial review, should mediate between state and national interests as the strength and legislative jurisdiction of the National Government inevitably increased through the expected growth of the national economy.[15] Whereas today's majority takes a leaf from the book of the old judicial economists in saying that the Court should somehow draw the line to keep the federal relationship in a proper balance, Madison, Wilson, and Marshall understood the Constitution very differently. Although Madison had emphasized the conception of a National Government of discrete powers (a conception that a number of the ratifying conventions thought was too indeterminate to protect civil liberties),[16] Madison himself must have sensed the potential scope of some of the powers granted (such as the authority to regulate commerce), for he *648 took care in The Federalist No. 46 to hedge his argument for limited power by explaining the importance of national politics in protecting the ' interests. The National Government "will partake sufficiently of the spirit [of the ], to be disinclined to invade the rights of the individual or the prerogatives of their governments." The Federalist No. 46, p. 319 (J. Cooke ed. 1961). James Wilson likewise noted that "it was a favorite object in the Convention" to secure the sovereignty of |
Justice Souter | 2,000 | 20 | dissenting | United States v. Morrison | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/118363/united-states-v-morrison/ | favorite object in the Convention" to secure the sovereignty of the and that it had been achieved through the structure of the Federal Government. 2 Elliot's Debates 438-439.[17] The Framers of the Bill of Rights, in turn, may well have sensed that Madison and Wilson were right about politics as the determinant of the federal balance within the broad limits of a power like commerce, for they formulated the Tenth Amendment without any provision comparable to the specific guarantees proposed for individual liberties.[18] In any case, this Court recognized the political component of federalism in the seminal Gibbons opinion. After declaring the plenary character of congressional power within the sphere of activity affecting commerce, the Chief Justice spoke for the Court in explaining that there was only one restraint on its valid exercise: *649 "The wisdom and the discretion of Congress, their identity with the people, and the influence which their constituents possess at elections, are, in this, as in many other instances, as that, for example, of declaring war, the sole restraints on which they have relied, to secure them from its abuse. They are the restraints on which the people must often rely solely, in all representative governments." Gibbons, 9 Wheat., Politics as the moderator of the congressional employment of the commerce power was the theme many years later in Wickard, for after the Court acknowledged the breadth of the Gibbons formulation it invoked Chief Justice Marshall yet again in adding that "[h]e made emphatic the embracing and penetrating nature of this power by warning that effective restraints on its exercise must proceed from political rather than judicial processes." Wickard, Hence, "conflicts of economic interest are wisely left under our system to resolution by Congress under its more flexible and responsible legislative process. Such conflicts rarely lend themselves to judicial determination. And with the wisdom, workability, or fairness, of the plan of regulation we have nothing to do." As with "conflicts of economic interest," so with supposed conflicts of sovereign political interests implicated by the Commerce Clause: the Constitution remits them to politics. The point can be put no more clearly than the Court put it the last time it repudiated the notion that some state activities categorically defied the commerce power as understood in accordance with generally accepted concepts. After confirming Madison's and Wilson's views with a recitation of the sources of state influence in the structure of the National Constitution, Garcia, -552, the Court disposed of the possibility of identifying "principled constitutional limitations on the scope of Congress' Commerce Clause powers over the merely *650 by |
Justice Souter | 2,000 | 20 | dissenting | United States v. Morrison | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/118363/united-states-v-morrison/ | of Congress' Commerce Clause powers over the merely *650 by relying on a priori definitions of state sovereignty," 8. It concluded that "the Framers chose to rely on a federal system in which special restraints on federal power over the inhered principally in the workings of the National Government itself, rather than in discrete limitations on the objects of federal authority. State sovereign interests, then, are more properly protected by procedural safeguards inherent in the structure of the federal system than by judicially created limitations on federal power." The Garcia Court's rejection of "judicially created limitations" in favor of the intended reliance on national politics was all the more powerful owing to the Court's explicit recognition that in the centuries since the framing the relative powers of the two sovereign systems have markedly changed. Nationwide economic integration is the norm, the national political power has been augmented by its vast revenues, and the power of the has been drawn down by the Seventeenth Amendment, eliminating selection of senators by state legislature in favor of direct election. The Garcia majority recognized that economic growth and the burgeoning of federal revenue have not amended the Constitution, which contains no circuit breaker to preclude the political consequences of these developments. Nor is there any justification for attempts to nullify the natural political impact of the particular amendment that was adopted. The significance for state political power of ending state legislative selection of senators was no secret in 1913, and the amendment was approved despite public comment on that very issue. Representative Franklin Bartlett, after quoting Madison's Federalist No. 62, as well as remarks by George Mason and John Dickinson during the Constitutional Convention, concluded, "It follows, therefore, that the *651 framers of the Constitution, were they present in this House to-day, would inevitably regard this resolution as a most direct blow at the doctrine of State's rights and at the integrity of the State sovereignties; for if you once deprive a State as a collective organism of all share in the General Government, you annihilate its federative importance." 26 Cong. Rec. 7774 (1894). Massachusetts Senator George Hoar likewise defended indirect election of the Senate as "a great security for the rights of the" S. Doc. No. 232, 59th Cong., 1st Sess., 21 (6). And Elihu Root warned that if the selection of senators should be taken from state legislatures, "the tide that now sets toward the Federal Government will swell in volume and power." 46 Cong. Rec. 2243 (1911). "The time will come," he continued, "when the Government of the United will be |
Justice Souter | 2,000 | 20 | dissenting | United States v. Morrison | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/118363/united-states-v-morrison/ | he continued, "when the Government of the United will be driven to the exercise of more arbitrary and unconsidered power, will be driven to greater concentration, will be driven to extend its functions into the internal affairs of the" See generally Rossum, The Irony of Constitutional Democracy: Federalism, the Supreme Court, and the Seventeenth Amendment, (9) These warnings did not kill the proposal; the Amendment was ratified, and today it is only the ratification, not the predictions, which this Court can legitimately heed.[19] *652 Amendments that alter the balance of power between the National and State Governments, like the Fourteenth, or that change the way the are represented within the Federal Government, like the Seventeenth, are not rips in the fabric of the Framers' Constitution, inviting judicial repairs. The Seventeenth Amendment may indeed have lessened the enthusiasm of the Senate to represent the as discrete sovereignties, but the Amendment did not convert the judiciary into an alternate shield against the commerce power. C The Court's choice to invoke considerations of traditional state regulation in these cases is especially odd in light of a distinction recognized in the now-repudiated opinion for the Court in In explaining that there was no inconsistency between declaring the immune to the commerce power exercised in the Fair Labor Standards Act, but subject to it under the Economic Stabilization Act of 1970, as decided in Fry v. United the Court spoke of the latter statute as dealing with a serious threat affecting all the political components of the federal *653 system, "which only collective action by the National Government might forestall." Today's majority, however, finds no significance whatever in the state support for the Act based upon the ' acknowledged failure to deal adequately with gender-based violence in state courts, and the belief of their own law enforcement agencies that national action is essential.[20] The National Association of Attorneys General supported the Act unanimously, see Violence Against Women: Victims of the System, Hearing on S. 15 before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 102d Cong., 1st Sess., 37-38 (1), and Attorneys General from 38 urged Congress to enact the Civil Rights Remedy, representing that "the current system for dealing with violence against women is inadequate," see Crimes of Violence Motivated by Gender, Hearing before the Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights of the House Committee on the Judiciary, 103d Cong., 1st Sess., 34-36 (3). It was against this record of failure at the state level that the Act was passed to provide the choice of a federal forum in place of the state-court systems found inadequate |
Justice Souter | 2,000 | 20 | dissenting | United States v. Morrison | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/118363/united-states-v-morrison/ | federal forum in place of the state-court systems found inadequate to stop gender-biased violence. See Women and Violence, Hearing before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 101st Cong., 2d Sess., 2 (0) (statement of Sen. Biden) (noting importance of federal forum).[21] The Act accordingly offers a federal civil rights remedy aimed exactly *654 at violence against women, as an alternative to the generic state tort causes of action found to be poor tools of action by the state task forces. See S. Rep. No. 101-545, 5 (noting difficulty of fitting gender-motivated crimes into commonlaw categories). As the 3 Senate Report put it, "The Violence Against Women Act is intended to respond both to the underlying attitude that this violence is somehow less serious than other crime and to the resulting failure of our criminal justice system to address such violence. Its goals are both symbolic and practical" S. Rep. No. 103-138, at 38. The collective opinion of state officials that the Act was needed continues virtually unchanged, and when the Civil Rights Remedy was challenged in court, the came to its defense. Thirty-six of them and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico have filed an amicus brief in support of petitioners in these cases, and only one State has taken respondents' side. It is, then, not the least irony of these cases that the will be forced to enjoy the new federalism whether they want it or not. For with the Court's decision today, Antonio Morrison, like Carter Coal `s James Carter before him, has "won the states' rights plea against the states themselves." R. Jackson, The Struggle for Judicial Supremacy 160 III All of this convinces me that today's ebb of the commerce power rests on error, and at the same time leads me to doubt that the majority's view will prove to be enduring law. There is yet one more reason for doubt. Although we sense the presence of Carter Coal, Schechter, and once again, the majority embraces them only at arm's-length. Where such decisions once stood for rules, today's opinion points to considerations by which substantial effects are discounted. Cases standing for the sufficiency of substantial effects are not overruled; cases overruled since 1937 are not quite revived. The Court's thinking betokens less clearly *655 a return to the conceptual straitjackets of Schechter and Carter Coal and than to something like the unsteady state of obscenity law between and a period in which the failure to provide a workable definition left this Court to review each case ad hoc. See ; Interstate Circuit, As our predecessors learned then, |
Justice Scalia | 2,001 | 9 | dissenting | Shafer v. South Carolina | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/118412/shafer-v-south-carolina/ | While I concede that today's judgment is a logical extension of I am more attached to the logic of the Constitution, whose Due Process Clause was understood as an embodiment of common-law tradition, rather than as authority for federal courts to promulgate wise national rules of criminal procedure. As I pointed out in Simmons, that common-law tradition does not contain special jury-instruction requirements for capital cases. Today's decision is the second page of the "whole new chapter" of our improvised "`death-is-different' jurisprudence" that Simmons began. The third page (or the fourth or fifth) will be the (logical-enough) extension of this novel requirement to cases in which the jury did not inquire into the possibility of parole. Providing such information may well be a good idea (though it will sometimes harm rather than help the defendant's case)and many States have indeed required it. See App. B to Brief for Petitioner. The Constitution, however, does not. I would limit Simmons to its facts. |
Justice Marshall | 1,977 | 15 | majority | Shaffer v. Heitner | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/109721/shaffer-v-heitner/ | The controversy in this case concerns the constitutionality of a Delaware statute that allows a court of that State to take jurisdiction of a lawsuit by sequestering any property of the defendant that happens to be located in Delaware. Appellants contend that the sequestration statute as applied in this case violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment both because it permits the state courts to exercise jurisdiction despite the absence of sufficient contacts among the defendants, the litigation, and the State of Delaware and because it authorizes the deprivation of defendants' property without providing adequate procedural safeguards. We find it necessary to consider only the first of these contentions. I Appellee Heitner, a nonresident of Delaware, is the owner of one share of stock in the Greyhound a business incorporated under the laws of Delaware with its principal place of business in Phoenix, Ariz. On May 22, 1974, he filed a shareholder's derivative suit in the Court of Chancery for New Castle County, Del., in which he named as defendants Greyhound, its wholly owned subsidiary Greyhound Lines,[1] and 28 present or former officers or directors of one or *190 both of the corporations. In essence, Heitner alleged that the individual defendants had violated their duties to Greyhound by causing it and its subsidiary to engage in actions that resulted in the corporations being held liable for substantial damages in a private antitrust suit[2] and a large fine in a criminal contempt action.[3] The activities which led to these penalties took place in Oregon. Simultaneously with his complaint, Heitner filed a motion for an order of sequestration of the Delaware property of the individual defendants pursuant to Del. Code Ann., Tit. 10, 366[4] This motion was accompanied by a supporting *191 affidavit of counsel which stated that the individual defendants were nonresidents of Delaware. The affidavit identified the property to be sequestered as "common stock, 3% Second Cumulative Preferenced Stock and stock unit credits of the Defendant Greyhound Corporation, a Delaware corporation, as well as all options and all warrants to purchase said stock issued to said individual Defendants and all contractural [sic] obligations, all rights, debts or credits due or accrued to or for the benefit of any of the said Defendants under any type of written agreement, contract or other legal instrument of any kind whatever between any of the individual Defendants and said corporation." The requested sequestration order was signed the day the motion was filed.[5] Pursuant to that order, the sequestrator[6]*192 "seized" approximately 82,000 shares of Greyhound common stock belonging to 19 of the defendants,[7] |
Justice Marshall | 1,977 | 15 | majority | Shaffer v. Heitner | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/109721/shaffer-v-heitner/ | of Greyhound common stock belonging to 19 of the defendants,[7] and options belonging to another 2 defendants.[8] These seizures were accomplished by placing "stop transfer" orders or their equivalents on the books of the Greyhound So far as the record shows, none of the certificates representing the seized property was physically present in Delaware. The stock was considered to be in Delaware, and so subject to seizure, by virtue of Del. Code Ann., Tit. 8, 169 which makes Delaware the situs of ownership of all stock in Delaware corporations.[9] All 28 defendants were notified of the initiation of the suit by certified mail directed to their last known addresses and by publication in a New Castle County newspaper. The 21 defendants whose property was seized (hereafter referred to as appellants) responded by entering a special appearance for *193 the purpose of moving to quash service of process and to vacate the sequestration order. They contended that the ex parte sequestration procedure did not accord them due process of law and that the property seized was not capable of attachment in Delaware. In addition, appellants asserted that under the rule of International Shoe they did not have sufficient contacts with Delaware to sustain the jurisdiction of that State's courts. The Court of Chancery rejected these arguments in a letter opinion which emphasized the purpose of the Delaware sequestration procedure: "The primary purpose of `sequestration' as authorized by 10 Del. C. 366 is not to secure possession of property pending a trial between resident debtors and creditors on the issue of who has the right to retain it. On the contrary, as here employed, `sequestration' is a process used to compel the personal appearance of a nonresident defendant to answer and defend a suit brought against him in a court of equity. It is accomplished by the appointment of a sequestrator by this Court to seize and hold property of the nonresident located in this State subject to further Court order. If the defendant enters a general appearance, the sequestered property is routinely released, unless the plaintiff makes special application to continue its seizure, in which event the plaintiff has the burden of proof and persuasion." App. 75-76. This limitation on the purpose and length of time for which sequestered property is held, the court concluded, rendered inapplicable the due process requirements enunciated in ; ; and App. 75-76, 80, 83-85. The court also found no state-law or federal constitutional barrier to the sequestrator's reliance on Del. Code Ann., Tit. 8, 169 *194 App. 76-79. Finally, the court held that the statutory |
Justice Marshall | 1,977 | 15 | majority | Shaffer v. Heitner | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/109721/shaffer-v-heitner/ | *194 App. 76-79. Finally, the court held that the statutory Delaware situs of the stock provided a sufficient basis for the exercise of quasi in rem jurisdiction by a Delaware court. On appeal, the Delaware Supreme Court affirmed the judgment of the Court of Chancery. Greyhound Most of the Supreme Court's opinion was devoted to rejecting appellants' contention that the sequestration procedure is inconsistent with the due process analysis developed in the Sniadach line of cases. The court based its rejection of that argument in part on its agreement with the Court of Chancery that the purpose of the sequestration procedure is to compel the appearance of the defendant, a purpose not involved in the Sniadach cases. The court also relied on what it considered the ancient origins of the sequestration procedure and approval of that procedure in the opinions of this Court,[10] Delaware's interest in asserting jurisdiction to adjudicate claims of mismanagement of a Delaware corporation, and the safeguards for defendants that it found in the Delaware statute. -236. *195 Appellants' claim that the Delaware courts did not have jurisdiction to adjudicate this action received much more cursory treatment. The court's analysis of the jurisdictional issue is contained in two paragraphs: "There are significant constitutional questions at issue here but we say at once that we do not deem the rule of International Shoe to be one of them. The reason, of course, is that jurisdiction under 366 remains quasi in rem founded on the presence of capital stock here, not on prior contact by defendants with this forum. Under 8 Del. C. 169 the `situs of the ownership of the capital stock of all corporations existing under the laws of this State [is] in this State,' and that provides the initial basis for jurisdiction. Delaware may constitutionally establish situs of such shares here, it has done so and the presence thereof provides the foundation for 366 in this case. On this issue we agree with the analysis made and the conclusion reached by Judge Stapleton in U. S. Industries,[[11]] "We hold that seizure of the Greyhound shares is not invalid because plaintiff has failed to meet the prior contacts tests of International Shoe." We noted probable jurisdiction.[12] We reverse. *196 II The Delaware courts rejected appellants' jurisdictional challenge by noting that this suit was brought as a quasi in rem proceeding. Since quasi in rem jurisdiction is traditionally based on attachment or seizure of property present in the jurisdiction, not on contacts between the defendant and the State, the courts considered appellants' claimed lack of contacts with Delaware |
Justice Marshall | 1,977 | 15 | majority | Shaffer v. Heitner | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/109721/shaffer-v-heitner/ | the courts considered appellants' claimed lack of contacts with Delaware to be unimportant. This categorical analysis assumes the continued soundness of the conceptual structure founded on the century-old case of Pennoyer was an ejectment action brought in federal court under the diversity jurisdiction. Pennoyer, the defendant in that action, held the land under a deed purchased in a sheriff's sale conducted to realize on a judgment for attorney's fees obtained against Neff in a previous action by one Mitchell. At the time of Mitchell's suit in an Oregon State court, Neff was a nonresident of Oregon. An Oregon statute allowed service by publication on nonresidents who had property in the State,[13] and Mitchell had used that procedure to bring Neff *197 before the court. The United States Circuit Court for the District of Oregon, in which Neff brought his ejectment action, refused to recognize the validity of the judgment against Neff in Mitchell's suit, and accordingly awarded the land to Neff.[14] This Court affirmed. Mr. Justice Field's opinion for the Court focused on the territorial limits of the States' judicial powers. Although recognizing that the States are not truly independent sovereigns, Mr. Justice Field found that their jurisdiction was defined by the "principles of public law" that regulate the relationships among independent nations. The first of those principles was "that every State possesses exclusive jurisdiction and sovereignty over persons and property within its territory." The second was "that no State can exercise direct jurisdiction and authority over persons or property without its territory." Thus, "in virtue of the State's jurisdiction over the property of the non-resident situated within its limits," the state courts "can inquire into that non-resident's obligations to its own citizens to the extent necessary to control the disposition of the property." The Court recognized that if the conclusions of that inquiry were adverse to the nonresident property owner, his interest in the property would be affected. Similarly, if the defendant consented to the jurisdiction of the state courts or was personally served within the State, a judgment could affect his interest in property outside the But any attempt "directly" to assert extraterritorial jurisdiction over persons or property would offend sister States and exceed the inherent limits of the State's power. A judgment resulting from such an attempt, Mr. Justice Field concluded, was not only unenforceable *198 in other States,[15] but was also void in the rendering State because it had been obtained in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. See also, e. g., This analysis led to the conclusion that Mitchell's judgment against |
Justice Marshall | 1,977 | 15 | majority | Shaffer v. Heitner | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/109721/shaffer-v-heitner/ | This analysis led to the conclusion that Mitchell's judgment against Neff could not be validly based on the State's power over persons within its borders, because Neff had not been personally served in Oregon, nor had he consensually appeared before the Oregon court. The Court reasoned that even if Neff had received personal notice of the action, service of process outside the State would have been ineffectual since the State's power was limited by its territorial boundaries. Moreover, the Court held, the action could not be sustained on the basis of the State's power over property within its borders because that property had not been brought before the court by attachment or any other procedure prior to judgment.[16] Since the judgment which authorized the sheriff's sale was therefore invalid, the sale transferred no title. Neff regained his land. From our perspective, the importance of Pennoyer is not its result, but the fact that its principles and corollaries derived from them became the basic elements of the constitutional *199 doctrine governing state-court jurisdiction. See, e. g., Hazard, A General Theory of State-Court Jurisdiction, As we have noted, under Pennoyer state authority to adjudicate was based on the jurisdiction's power over either persons or property. This fundamental concept is embodied in the very vocabulary which we use to describe judgments. If a court's jurisdiction is based on its authority over the defendant's person, the action and judgment are denominated "in personam" and can impose a personal obligation on the defendant in favor of the plaintiff. If jurisdiction is based on the court's power over property within its territory, the action is called "in rem" or "quasi in rem." The effect of a judgment in such a case is limited to the property that supports jurisdiction and does not impose a personal liability on the property owner, since he is not before the court.[17] In Pennoyer's terms, the owner is affected only "indirectly" by an in rem judgment adverse to his interest in the property subject to the court's disposition. By concluding that "[t]he authority of every tribunal is necessarily restricted by the territorial limits of the State in which it is established," Pennoyer sharply limited the availability of in personam jurisdiction over defendants not resident in the forum If a nonresident defendant could not be found in a State, he could not be sued there. On the other hand, since the State in which property *200 was located was considered to have exclusive sovereignty over that property, in rem actions could proceed regardless of the owner's location. Indeed, since a State's process |
Justice Marshall | 1,977 | 15 | majority | Shaffer v. Heitner | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/109721/shaffer-v-heitner/ | regardless of the owner's location. Indeed, since a State's process could not reach beyond its borders, this Court held after Pennoyer that due process did not require any effort to give a property owner personal notice that his property was involved in an in rem proceeding. See, e. g., ; ; The Pennoyer rules generally favored nonresident defendants by making them harder to sue. This advantage was reduced, however, by the ability of a resident plaintiff to satisfy a claim against a nonresident defendant by bringing into court any property of the defendant located in the plaintiff's See, e. g., Zammit, Quasi-In-Rem Jurisdiction: Outmoded and Unconstitutional?, For example, in the well-known case of Epstein, a resident of Maryland, had a claim against Balk, a resident of North Carolina. Harris, another North Carolina resident, owed money to Balk. When Harris happened to visit Maryland, Epstein garnished his debt to Balk. Harris did not contest the debt to Balk and paid it to Epstein's North Carolina attorney. When Balk later sued Harris in North Carolina, this Court held that the Full Faith and Credit Clause, U. S. Const., Art. IV, 1, required that Harris' payment to Epstein be treated as a discharge of his debt to Balk. This Court reasoned that the debt Harris owed Balk was an intangible form of property belonging to Balk, and that the location of that property traveled with the debtor. By obtaining personal jurisdiction over Harris, Epstein had "arrested" his debt to Balk, and brought it into the Maryland court. Under the structure established by Pennoyer, Epstein was then entitled to proceed against that debt to vindicate his claim against Balk, even though Balk himself was not subject to the jurisdiction *201 of a Maryland tribunal.[18] See also, e. g., Louisville & N. R. ; cert. denied, Pennoyer itself recognized that its rigid categories, even as blurred by the kind of action typified by Harris, could not accommodate some necessary litigation. Accordingly, Mr. Justice Field's opinion carefully noted that cases involving the personal status of the plaintiff, such as divorce actions, could be adjudicated in the plaintiff's home State even though the defendant could not be served within that -735. Similarly, the opinion approved the practice of considering a foreign corporation doing business in a State to have consented to being sued in that ; see Lafayette Ins. This *202 basis for in personam jurisdiction over foreign corporations was later supplemented by the doctrine that a corporation doing business in a State could be deemed "present" in the State, and so subject to service of process |
Justice Marshall | 1,977 | 15 | majority | Shaffer v. Heitner | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/109721/shaffer-v-heitner/ | in the State, and so subject to service of process under the rule of Pennoyer. See, e. g., International Harvester ; Philadelphia & Reading R. See generally Note, Developments in the Law, State-Court Jurisdiction, The advent of automobiles, with the concomitant increase in the incidence of individuals causing injury in States where they were not subject to in personam actions under Pennoyer, required further moderation of the territorial limits on jurisdictional power. This modification, like the accommodation to the realities of interstate corporate activities, was accomplished by use of a legal fiction that left the conceptual structure established in Pennoyer theoretically unaltered. Cf. The fiction used was that the out-of-state motorist, who it was assumed could be excluded altogether from the State's highways, had by using those highways appointed a designated state official as his agent to accept process. See Since the motorist's "agent" could be personally served within the State, the state courts could obtain in personam jurisdiction over the nonresident driver. The motorists' consent theory was easy to administer since it required only a finding that the out-of-state driver had used the State's roads. By contrast, both the fictions of implied consent to service on the part of a foreign corporation and of corporate presence required a finding that the corporation was "doing business" in the forum Defining the criteria for making that finding and deciding whether they were met absorbed much judicial energy. See, e. g., International Shoe *203 -319. While the essentially quantitative tests which emerged from these cases purported simply to identify circumstances under which presence or consent could be attributed to the corporation, it became clear that they were in fact attempting to ascertain "what dealings make it just to subject a foreign corporation to local suit." In International Shoe, we acknowledged that fact. The question in International Shoe was whether the corporation was subject to the judicial and taxing jurisdiction of Mr. Chief Justice Stone's opinion for the Court began its analysis of that question by noting that the historical basis of in personam jurisdiction was a court's power over the defendant's person. That power, however, was no longer the central concern: "But now that the capias ad respondendum has given way to personal service of summons or other form of notice, due process requires only that in order to subject a defendant to a judgment in personam, if he be not present within the territory of the forum, he have certain minimum contacts with it such that the maintenance of the suit does not offend `traditional notions of fair play and substantial |
Justice Marshall | 1,977 | 15 | majority | Shaffer v. Heitner | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/109721/shaffer-v-heitner/ | does not offend `traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice.'" Thus, the inquiry into the State's jurisdiction over a foreign corporation appropriately focused not on whether the corporation was "present" but on whether there have been "such contacts of the corporation with the state of the forum as make it reasonable, in the context of our federal system of government, to require the corporation to defend the particular suit which is brought there." *204 Mechanical or quantitative evaluations of the defendant's activities in the forum could not resolve the question of reasonableness: "Whether due process is satisfied must depend rather upon the quality and nature of the activity in relation to the fair and orderly administration of the laws which it was the purpose of the due process clause to insure. That clause does not contemplate that a state may make binding a judgment in personam against an individual or corporate defendant with which the state has no contacts, ties, or relations."[19] Thus, the relationship among the defendant, the forum, and the litigation, rather than the mutually exclusive sovereignty of the States on which the rules of Pennoyer rest, became the central concern of the inquiry into personal jurisdiction.[20] The immediate effect of this departure from Pennoyer's conceptual apparatus was to increase the ability of the state courts to obtain personal jurisdiction over nonresident defendants. See, e. g., Green, Jurisdictional Reform in California, *205 21 Hastings L. J. 1219, 1231-1233 (1970); Currie, The Growth of the Long Arm: Eight Years of Extended Jurisdiction in Illinois, 1963 U. Ill. L. F. 533; Developments 1000-1008. No equally dramatic change has occurred in the law governing jurisdiction in rem. There have, however, been intimations that the collapse of the in personam wing of Pennoyer has not left that decision unweakened as a foundation for in rem jurisdiction. Well-reasoned lower court opinions have questioned the proposition that the presence of property in a State gives that State jurisdiction to adjudicate rights to the property regardless of the relationship of the underlying dispute and the property owner to the forum. See, e. g., U. S. Industries, cert. pending, No. 76-359; ; ; ; appeal dismissed and cert. denied sub nom. Columbia Broadcasting The overwhelming majority of commentators have also rejected Pennoyer's premise that a proceeding "against" property is not a proceeding against the owners of that property. Accordingly, they urge that the "traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice" that govern a State's power to adjudicate in personam should also govern its power to adjudicate personal rights to property located in the See, |
Justice Marshall | 1,977 | 15 | majority | Shaffer v. Heitner | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/109721/shaffer-v-heitner/ | to adjudicate personal rights to property located in the See, e. g., Von Mehren & Trautman, Jurisdiction to Adjudicate: A Suggested Analysis, ; Traynor, Is This Conflict Really Necessary?, 37 Texas L. Rev. 657 (1959) (hereafter Traynor); Ehrenzweig, The Transient Rule of Personal Jurisdiction: The "Power" Myth and Forum Conveniens, 65 Yale L. J. 289 ; Developments; Hazard. *206 Although this Court has not addressed this argument directly, we have held that property cannot be subjected to a court's judgment unless reasonable and appropriate efforts have been made to give the property owners actual notice of the action. ; ; This conclusion recognizes, contrary to Pennoyer, that an adverse judgment in rem directly affects the property owner by divesting him of his rights in the property before the court. ; cf. Continental Grain (separate actions against barge and barge owner are one "civil action" for purpose of transfer under 28 U.S. C. 1404 (a)). Moreover, in Mullane we held that Fourteenth Amendment rights cannot depend on the classification of an action as in rem or in personam, since that is "a classification for which the standards are so elusive and confused generally and which, being primarily for state courts to define, may and do vary from state to state." It is clear, therefore, that the law of state-court jurisdiction no longer stands securely on the foundation established in Pennoyer.[21] We think that the time is ripe to consider whether the standard of fairness and substantial justice set forth in International Shoe should be held to govern actions in rem as well as in personam. *207 III The case for applying to jurisdiction in rem the same test of "fair play and substantial justice" as governs assertions of jurisdiction in personam is simple and straightforward. It is premised on recognition that "[t]he phrase, `judicial jurisdiction over a thing,' is a customary elliptical way of referring to jurisdiction over the interests of persons in a thing." Restatement (Second) of Conflict of Laws 56, Introductory Note (1971) (hereafter Restatement).[22] This recognition leads to the conclusion that in order to justify an exercise of jurisdiction in rem, the basis for jurisdiction must be sufficient to justify exercising "jurisdiction over the interests of persons in a thing."[23] The standard for determining whether an exercise of jurisdiction over the interests of persons is consistent with the Due Process Clause is the minimum-contacts standard elucidated in International Shoe. This argument, of course, does not ignore the fact that the presence of property in a State may bear on the existence of jurisdiction by providing contacts among the |
Justice Marshall | 1,977 | 15 | majority | Shaffer v. Heitner | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/109721/shaffer-v-heitner/ | on the existence of jurisdiction by providing contacts among the forum State, the defendant, and the litigation. For example, when claims to the property itself are the source of the underlying controversy between the plaintiff and the defendant,[24] it would be unusual for the State where the property is located not to have jurisdiction. In such cases, the defendant's claim to property *208 located in the State would normally[25] indicate that he expected to benefit from the State's protection of his interest.[26] The State's strong interests in assuring the marketability of property within its borders[] and in providing a procedure for peaceful resolution of disputes about the possession of that property would also support jurisdiction, as would the likelihood that important records and witnesses will be found in the [28] The presence of property may also favor jurisdiction in cases, such as suits for injury suffered on the land of an absentee owner, where the defendant's ownership of the property is conceded but the cause of action is otherwise related to rights and duties growing out of that ownership.[29] It appears, therefore, that jurisdiction over many types of actions which now are or might be brought in rem would not be affected by a holding that any assertion of state-court jurisdiction must satisfy the International Shoe standard.[30] For the type of quasi in rem action typified by and the present case, however, accepting the proposed analysis would result in significant change. These are cases where *209 the property which now serves as the basis for state-court jurisdiction is completely unrelated to the plaintiff's cause of action. Thus, although the presence of the defendant's property in a State might suggest the existence of other ties among the defendant, the State, and the litigation, the presence of the property alone would not support the State's jurisdiction. If those other ties did not exist, cases over which the State is now thought to have jurisdiction could not be brought in that forum. Since acceptance of the International Shoe test would most affect this class of cases, we examine the arguments against adopting that standard as they relate to this category of litigation.[31] Before doing so, however, we note that this type of case also presents the clearest illustration of the argument in favor of assessing assertions of jurisdiction by a single standard. For in cases such as Harris and this one, the only role played by the property is to provide the basis for bringing the defendant into court.[32] Indeed, the express purpose of the Delaware sequestration procedure is to compel the defendant |
Justice Marshall | 1,977 | 15 | majority | Shaffer v. Heitner | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/109721/shaffer-v-heitner/ | of the Delaware sequestration procedure is to compel the defendant to enter a personal appearance.[33] In such cases, if a direct assertion of personal jurisdiction over the defendant would violate the Constitution, it would seem that an indirect assertion of that jurisdiction should be equally impermissible. *210 The primary rationale for treating the presence of property as a sufficient basis for jurisdiction to adjudicate claims over which the State would not have jurisdiction if International Shoe applied is that a wrongdoer "should not be able to avoid payment of his obligations by the expedient of removing his assets to a place where he is not subject to an in personam suit." Restatement 66, Comment a. Accord, Developments 955. This justification, however, does not explain why jurisdiction should be recognized without regard to whether the property is present in the State because of an effort to avoid the owner's obligations. Nor does it support jurisdiction to adjudicate the underlying claim. At most, it suggests that a State in which property is located should have jurisdiction to attach that property, by use of proper procedures,[34] as security for a judgment being sought in a forum where the litigation can be maintained consistently with International Shoe. See, e. g., Von Mehren & Trautman 1178; Hazard 284-285; at 123-124. Moreover, we know of nothing to justify the assumption that a debtor can avoid paying his obligations by removing his property to a State in which his creditor cannot obtain personal jurisdiction over him.[35] The Full Faith and Credit Clause, after all, makes the valid in personam judgment of one State enforceable in all other States.[36] *211 It might also be suggested that allowing in rem jurisdiction avoids the uncertainty inherent in the International Shoe standard and assures a plaintiff of a forum.[37] See Folk & at 749, 767. We believe, however, that the fairness standard of International Shoe can be easily applied in the vast majority of cases. Moreover, when the existence of jurisdiction in a particular forum under International Shoe is unclear, the cost of simplifying the litigation by avoiding the jurisdictional question may be the sacrifice of "fair play and substantial justice." That cost is too high. We are left, then, to consider the significance of the long history of jurisdiction based solely on the presence of property in a Although the theory that territorial power is both essential to and sufficient for jurisdiction has been undermined, we have never held that the presence of property in a State does not automatically confer jurisdiction over the owner's interest in that property.[38] This |
Justice Marshall | 1,977 | 15 | majority | Shaffer v. Heitner | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/109721/shaffer-v-heitner/ | confer jurisdiction over the owner's interest in that property.[38] This history must be *212 considered as supporting the proposition that jurisdiction based solely on the presence of property satisfies the demands of due process, cf. but it is not decisive. "[T]raditional notions of fair play and substantial justice" can be as readily offended by the perpetuation of ancient forms that are no longer justified as by the adoption of new procedures that are inconsistent with the basic values of our constitutional heritage. Cf. ; The fiction that an assertion of jurisdiction over property is anything but an assertion of jurisdiction over the owner of the property supports an ancient form without substantial modern justification. Its continued acceptance would serve only to allow state-court jurisdiction that is fundamentally unfair to the defendant. We therefore conclude that all assertions of state-court jurisdiction must be evaluated according to the standards set forth in International Shoe and its progeny.[39] *213 IV The Delaware courts based their assertion of jurisdiction in this case solely on the statutory presence of appellants' property in Delaware. Yet that property is not the subject matter of this litigation, nor is the underlying cause of action related to the property. Appellants' holdings in Greyhound do not, therefore, provide contacts with Delaware sufficient to support the jurisdiction of that State's courts over appellants. If it exists, that jurisdiction must have some other foundation.[40] Appellee Heitner did not allege and does not now claim that appellants have ever set foot in Delaware. Nor does he identify any act related to his cause of action as having taken place in Delaware. Nevertheless, he contends that appellants' positions as directors and officers of a corporation chartered in Delaware[41] provide sufficient "contacts, ties, or relations," International Shoe 326 U. S., at *214 319, with that State to give its courts jurisdiction over appellants in this stockholder's derivative action. This argument is based primarily on what Heitner asserts to be the strong interest of Delaware in supervising the management of a Delaware corporation. That interest is said to derive from the role of Delaware law in establishing the corporation and defining the obligations owed to it by its officers and directors. In order to protect this interest, appellee concludes, Delaware's courts must have jurisdiction over corporate fiduciaries such as appellants. This argument is undercut by the failure of the Delaware Legislature to assert the state interest appellee finds so compelling. Delaware law bases jurisdiction, not on appellants' status as corporate fiduciaries, but rather on the presence of their property in the Although the sequestration procedure used |
Justice Marshall | 1,977 | 15 | majority | Shaffer v. Heitner | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/109721/shaffer-v-heitner/ | of their property in the Although the sequestration procedure used here may be most frequently used in derivative suits against officers and directors, Hughes Tool the authorizing statute evinces no specific concern with such actions. Sequestration can be used in any suit against a nonresident,[42] see, e. g., U. S. Industries, cert. pending, No. 76-359 (breach of contract); Hughes Tool and reaches corporate fiduciaries only if they happen to own interests in a Delaware corporation, or other property in the But as Heitner's failure to secure jurisdiction over seven of the defendants named in his complaint demonstrates, there is no necessary relationship between holding a position as a corporate fiduciary and owning stock or other interests in the corporation.[43] If Delaware perceived its interest in securing jurisdiction over corporate fiduciaries *215 to be as great as Heitner suggests, we would expect it to have enacted a statute more clearly designed to protect that interest. Moreover, even if Heitner's assessment of the importance of Delaware's interest is accepted, his argument fails to demonstrate that Delaware is a fair forum for this litigation. The interest appellee has identified may support the application of Delaware law to resolve any controversy over appellants' actions in their capacities as officers and directors.[44] But we have rejected the argument that if a State's law can properly be applied to a dispute, its courts necessarily have jurisdiction over the parties to that dispute. "[The State] does not acquire jurisdiction by being the `center of gravity' of the controversy, or the most convenient location for litigation. The issue is personal jurisdiction, not choice of law. It is resolved in this case by considering the acts of the [appellants]."[45] Appellee suggests that by accepting positions as officers or directors of a Delaware corporation, appellants performed the acts required by He notes that Delaware law provides substantial benefits to corporate officers and directors,[46] and that these benefits were at least in part *216 the incentive for appellants to assume their positions. It is, he says, "only fair and just" to require appellants, in return for these benefits, to respond in the State of Delaware when they are accused of misusing their power. Brief for Appellee 15. But like Heitner's first argument, this line of reasoning establishes only that it is appropriate for Delaware law to govern the obligations of appellants to Greyhound and its stockholders. It does not demonstrate that appellants have "purposefully avail[ed themselves] of the privilege of conducting activities within the forum State," in a way that would justify bringing them before a Delaware tribunal. Appellants have simply |
Justice Marshall | 1,977 | 15 | majority | Shaffer v. Heitner | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/109721/shaffer-v-heitner/ | justify bringing them before a Delaware tribunal. Appellants have simply had nothing to do with the State of Delaware. Moreover, appellants had no reason to expect to be haled before a Delaware court. Delaware, unlike some States,[47] has not enacted a statute that treats acceptance of a directorship as consent to jurisdiction in the And "[i]t strains reason to suggest that anyone buying securities in a corporation formed in Delaware `impliedly consents' to subject himself to Delaware's. jurisdiction on any cause of action." Folk & at 785. Appellants, who were not required to acquire interests in Greyhound in order to hold their positions, did not by acquiring those interests surrender their right to be brought to judgment only in States with which they had had "minimum contacts." The Due Process Clause "does not contemplate that a state may make binding a judgment against an individual or corporate defendant with which the state has no contacts, ties, or relations." International Shoe 326 U. S., Delaware's assertion of jurisdiction over appellants in this case is inconsistent with that constitutional limitation on *217 state power. The judgment of the Delaware Supreme Court must, therefore, be reversed. It is so ordered. MR. JUSTICE REHNQUIST took no part in the consideration or decision of this case. MR. |
Justice Scalia | 2,001 | 9 | concurring | Seling v. Young | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/118401/seling-v-young/ | I agree with the Court's holding that a statute, "found to be civil [in nature], cannot be deemed punitive" or criminal "as applied" for purposes of the Ex Post Facto and Double Jeopardy Clauses. Ante this page. The Court accurately observes that this holding gives us "no occasion to consider. the extent to which a court may look to actual conditions of confinement and implementation of the statute to determine in the first instance whether a confinement scheme is civil in nature." Ante, at 266. I write separately to dissociate myself from any implication that this reserved point may be an open question. I do not regard it as such since, three *268 years ago, we rejected a similar double jeopardy challenge (based upon the statute's implementation "as applied" to the petitioners), where the statute had not yet been determined to be civil in nature, and where we were making that determination "in the first instance." See To be consistent with the most narrow holding of that case (which, unlike this one, did not involve imposition of confinement), any consideration of subsequent implementation in the course of making a "first instance" determination cannot extend to all subsequent implementation, but must be limited to implementation of confinement, and of other impositions that are "not a fixed event," ante, at 263. That, however, would be a peculiar limitation, since even "fixed events" such as the imposition of a fine can, in their implementation, acquire penal aspects exemplified in by the allegedly punitive size of the fines, and by the availability of reduction for "good-faith" violations, see -98, 104. Moreover, the language and the reasoning of leave no room for such a peculiar limitation. In that case, the petitioners contended that the punitive nature of the statute that had been applied to them could be assessed by considering the aforementioned features of the fines. We flatly rejected that contention, which found support in our prior decision in United we said, had erroneously made a "significant departure" from our prior jurisprudence, in deciding "to `asses[s] the character of the actual sanctions imposed,' rather than, as [v.] demanded, evaluating the `statute on its face' to determine whether it provided for what amounted to a criminal sanction, [id.], at" The factors, we said, "`must be considered in relation to the statute on its face,' " quoting from We held that "[t]he fact that petitioners' *269 `good faith' was considered in determining the amount of the penalty to be imposed in this case [a circumstance that would normally indicate the assessment is punitive] is irrelevant, as we |
Justice Scalia | 2,001 | 9 | concurring | Seling v. Young | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/118401/seling-v-young/ | normally indicate the assessment is punitive] is irrelevant, as we look only to `the statute on its face' to determine whether a penalty is criminal in nature." quoting at We repeated, to be sure, the principle that the statutory scheme would be criminal if it was sufficiently punitive "`either in purpose or effect, ` " quoting United but it was clear from the opinion that this referred to effects apparent upon the face of the statute. The short of the matter is that, for Double Jeopardy and Ex Post Facto Clause purposes, the question of criminal penalty vel non depends upon the intent of the legislature;[*] and harsh executive implementation cannot "transfor[m] what was clearly intended as a civil remedy into a criminal penalty," Rex Trailer any more than compassionate executive implementation can transform a criminal penalty into a civil remedy. This is not to say that there is no relief from a system that administers a facially civil statute in a fashion that would render it criminal. The remedy, however, is not to invalidate the legislature's handiwork under the Double Jeopardy Clause, but to eliminate whatever excess in administration contradicts the statute's civil character. When, as here, a state statute is at issue, the remedy for implementation that does not comport with the civil nature of the statute is resort to the traditional state proceedings that challenge unlawful executive action; if those proceedings fail, and the state *270 courts authoritatively interpret the state statute as permitting impositions that are indeed punitive, then and only then can federal courts pronounce a statute that on its face is civil to be criminal. Such an approach protects federal courts from becoming enmeshed in the sort of intrusive inquiry into local conditions at state institutions that are best left to the State's own judiciary, at least in the first instance. And it avoids federal invalidation of state statutes on the basis of executive implementation that the state courts themselves, given the opportunity, would find to be ultra vires. Only this approach, it seems to me, is in accord with our sound and traditional reluctance to be the initial interpreter of state law. See Railroad Comm'n of With this clarification, I join the opinion of the Court. Justice Thomas, concurring in the judgment. We granted certiorari to decide whether "an otherwise valid civil statute can be divested of its civil nature" simply because of an administrative agency's failure to implement the statute according to its terms. Pet. for Cert. i The majority declines to answer this question. Instead, it assumes that the statute at |
Justice Scalia | 2,001 | 9 | concurring | Seling v. Young | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/118401/seling-v-young/ | answer this question. Instead, it assumes that the statute at issue is civilrather than "otherwise civil," or civil "on its face." And then it merely holds that a statute that is civil cannot be deemed the opposite of civil"punitive," as the majority puts itas applied to a single individual. Ante, at 267. In explaining this conclusion, the majority expressly reserves judgment on whether the manner of implementation should affect a court's assessment of a statute as civil in the "first instance." Ante, at 263, 267. I write separately to express my view, first, that a statute which is civil on its face cannot be divested of its civil nature simply because of the manner in which it is implemented, and second, that the distinction between a challenge in the *271 "first instance" and a subsequent challenge is one without a difference. Before proceeding, it is important to clarify the issue in this case. The majority adopts the Ninth Circuit's nomenclature and refers to respondent's claim as an "as-applied" challenge, see, e. g., ante, at 263, but that label is at best misleading. Typically an "as-applied" challenge is a claim that a statute, "by its own terms, infringe[s] constitutional freedoms in the circumstances of [a] particular case." United In contrast, respondent's claim is not that Washington's Community Protection Act of 1990 (Washington Act or Act), et seq. (1992), "by its own terms" is unconstitutional as applied to him,[1] but rather that the statute is not being applied according to its terms at all.[2] Respondent essentially contends that the actual conditions of confinement, notwithstanding the text of the statute, are punitive and incompatible with the Act's treatment purpose. See ante, at 259-260. *272 A challenge, such as this one, to the implementation of a facially civil statute is not only "unworkable," as the majority puts it, ante, at 263, but also prohibited by our decision in In we held that, when determining whether a statute is civil or criminal, a court must examine the "statute on its face." quoting In so holding, we expressly disavowed the approach used in United which evaluated the "actual sanctions imposed." quoting Respondent's claim is flatly inconsistent with the holding of because respondent asks us to look beyond the face of the Washington Act and to examine instead the actual sanctions imposed on him, that is, the actual conditions of confinement. Respondent argues, and the Ninth Circuit held, that `s reach is limited to the particular sanctions involved in that casemonetary penalties and occupational disbarmentand does not apply here, where the sanction is confinement. however, contains no |
Justice Scalia | 2,001 | 9 | concurring | Seling v. Young | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/118401/seling-v-young/ | apply here, where the sanction is confinement. however, contains no indication whatsoever that its holding is limited to the specific sanctions at issue. To the contrary, as we explained in a court may not elevate to dispositive status any of the factors that it may consider in determining whether a sanction is criminal.[3] 522 U. S., One of these nondispositive *273 factors is confinement. (stating that one of the factors is "[w]hether the sanction involves an affirmative disability or restraint," quoting ). Yet elevating confinement to dispositive status is exactly what respondent asks us to do when he advances his distinction between confinement and other sanctions. Because rejects such an argument, respondent's claim fails. An implementation-based challenge to a facially civil statute would be as inappropriate in reviewing the statute in the "first instance," ante, at 263, 267 (majority opinion), as it is here. In the first instance, as here, there is no place for such a challenge in the governing jurisprudence. which requires courts to look at the face of the statute, precludes implementation-based challenges at any time. Moreover, the implementation-based claim would be as "unworkable," ante, at 263 (majority opinion), in the first instance as in later challenges. Because the actual conditions of confinement may change over time and may vary from facility to facility, an implementation-based challenge, if successful, would serve to invalidate a statute that may be implemented without any constitutional infirmities at a future time or in a separate facility. To use the majority's words, the validity of a statute should not be "based merely on vagaries in the implementation of the authorizing statute." And yet the majority suggests that courts may be able to consider conditions of confinement in determining whether a statute is punitive. Ante, at 263, 266. To the extent that the conditions are actually provided for on the face of the statute, I of course agree. Cf. However, to the extent that the conditions result from the fact that the statute is not being applied according to its terms, the conditions are not the effect of the statute, but rather the *274 effect of its improper implementation.[4] A suit based on these conditions cannot prevail. * * * The Washington Act does not provide on its face for punitive conditions of confinement, and the actual conditions under which the Act is implemented are of no concern to our inquiry. I therefore concur in the judgment of the Court. |
Justice Blackmun | 1,976 | 11 | majority | Barrett v. United States | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/109341/barrett-v-united-states/ | Petitioner Pearl Barrett has been convicted by a jury in the United District Court for the Eastern District *213 of Kentucky of a violation of 18 U.S. C. 922 (h),[1] a part of the Gun Control Act of 1968, Stat. 1213, amending the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, Stat. 197, enacted earlier the same year. The issue before us is whether 922 (h) has application to a purchaser's intrastate acquisition of a firearm that previously, but independently of the purchaser's receipt, had been transported in interstate commerce from the manufacturer to a distributor and then from the distributor to the dealer. I In January 1967, petitioner was convicted in a Kentucky state court of housebreaking. He received a two-year sentence. On April 1, 1972, he purchased a32-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver over the counter from a Western Auto Store in Booneville, Ky., where petitioner resided.[2] The vendor, who was a local dentist as *214 well as the owner of the store, and who was acquainted with petitioner, was a federally licensed firearms dealer. The weapon petitioner purchased had been manufactured in Massachusetts, shipped by the manufacturer to a distributor in North Carolina, and then received by the Kentucky dealer from the distributor in March 1972, a little less than a month prior to petitioner's purchase. The sale to Barrett was the firearm's first retail transaction. It was the only handgun then in the dealer's stock. Tr. 36-47. Within an hour after the purchase petitioner was arrested by a county sheriff for driving while intoxicated. The firearm, fully loaded, was on the floorboard of the car on the driver's side. Petitioner was charged with a violation of 922 (h). He pleaded not guilty. At the trial no evidence was presented to show that Barrett personally had participated in any way in the previous interstate movement of the firearm. The evidence was merely to the effect that he had purchased the revolver out of the local dealer's stock, and that the gun, having been manufactured and then warehoused in other had reached the dealer through interstate channels. At the close of the prosecution's case, Barrett moved for a directed verdict of acquittal on the ground that 922 (h) was not applicable to his receipt of the firearm.[3] The motion *215 was denied. The court instructed the jury that the statute's interstate requirement was satisfied if the firearm at some time in its past had traveled in interstate commerce.[4] A verdict of guilty was returned. Petitioner received a sentence of three years, subject to the immediate parole eligibility provisions |
Justice Blackmun | 1,976 | 11 | majority | Barrett v. United States | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/109341/barrett-v-united-states/ | of three years, subject to the immediate parole eligibility provisions of 18 U.S. C. 4208 (a) (2). On appeal, the Court of Appeals affirmed by a divided vote on the question before us. Because of the importance of the issue and because the Sixth Circuit's decision appeared to have overtones of conflict with the opinion and decision of the United Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in United we granted certiorari limited to the 922 (h) issue. II Petitioner concedes that Congress, under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, has the power to regulate interstate trafficking in firearms. Brief for Petitioner 7. He states, however, that the issue before *216 us concerns the scope of Congress' exercise of that power in this statute. He argues that, in its enactment of 922 (h), Congress was interested in "the business of gun traffic," Brief for Petitioner 11; that the Act was meant "to deal with businesses, not individuals per se" (emphasis in original), that is, with mailorder houses, out-of-state sources, and the like; and that the Act was not intended to, and does not, reach an isolated intrastate receipt, such as Barrett's transaction, where the handgun was sold within Kentucky by a local merchant to a local resident with whom the merchant was acquainted, and where the transaction "has no apparent connection with interstate commerce," despite the weapon's manufacture and original distribution in other than Kentucky. We feel, however, that the language of 922 (h), the structure of the Act of which 922 (h) is a part, and the manifest purpose of Congress are all adverse to petitioner's position. A. Section 922 (h) pointedly and simply provides that it is unlawful for four categories of persons, including a convicted felon, "to receive any firearm or ammunition which has been shipped or transported in interstate or foreign commerce." The quoted language is without ambiguity. It is directed unrestrictedly at the felon's receipt of any firearm that "has been" shipped in interstate commerce. It contains no limitation to a receipt which itself is part of the interstate movement. We therefore have no reason to differ with the Court of Appeals' majority's conclusion that the language "means exactly what it says." 504 F.2d, 32. It is to be noted, furthermore, that while the proscribed act, "to receive any firearm," is in the present tense, the interstate commerce reference is in the present perfect tense, denoting an act that has been completed. *217 Thus, there is no warping or stretching of language when the statute is applied to a firearm that already has completed its |
Justice Blackmun | 1,976 | 11 | majority | Barrett v. United States | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/109341/barrett-v-united-states/ | is applied to a firearm that already has completed its interstate journey and has come to rest in the dealer's showcase at the time of its purchase and receipt by the felon. Congress knew the significance and meaning of the language it employed. It used the present perfect tense elsewhere in the same section, namely, in 922 (h) (1) (a person who "has been convicted"), and in 922 (h) (4) (a person who "has been adjudicated" or who "has been committed"), in contrast to its use of the present tense ("who is") in 922 (h) (1), (2), and (3). The statute's pattern is consistent and no unintended misuse of language or of tense is apparent. Had Congress intended to confine 922 (h) to direct interstate receipt, it would have so provided, just as it did in other sections of the Gun Control Act. See 922 (a) (3) (declaring it unlawful for a nonlicensee to receive in the State where he resides a firearm purchased or obtained "by such person outside that State"); 922 (j) (prohibiting the receipt of a stolen firearm "moving as interstate commerce"); and 922 (k) (prohibiting the receipt "in interstate commerce" of a firearm the serial number of which has been removed). Statutes other than the Gun Control Act similarly utilize restrictive language when only direct interstate commerce is to be reached. See, e. g., 18 U.S. C. 659, 1084, 1201, 1231, 1951, 1952, 2313, 2315, and 2421, and 15 U.S. C. 77e. As we have said, there is no ambiguity in the words of 922 (h), and there is no justification for indulging in uneasy statutory construction. United v. Wiltberger, 5, Wheat. 76, 95-96 (1820); ; See United There is no occasion here to resort to a rule of lenity, *218 see ; United for there is no ambiguity that calls for a resolution in favor of lenity. A criminal statute, to be sure, is to be strictly construed, but it is "not to be construed so strictly as to defeat the obvious intention of the legislature." American Fur ; 415 U. S., at B. The very structure of the Gun Control Act demonstrates that Congress did not intend merely to restrict interstate sales but sought broadly to keep firearms away from the persons Congress classified as potentially irresponsible and dangerous. These persons are comprehensively barred by the Act from acquiring firearms by any means. Thus, 922 (d) prohibits a licensee from knowingly selling or otherwise disposing of any firearm (whether in an interstate or intrastate transaction, see ) to the same categories of potentially irresponsible |
Justice Blackmun | 1,976 | 11 | majority | Barrett v. United States | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/109341/barrett-v-united-states/ | transaction, see ) to the same categories of potentially irresponsible persons. If 922 (h) were to be construed as petitioner suggests, it would not complement 922 (d), and a gap in the statute's coverage would be created, for then, although the licensee is prohibited from selling either interstate or intrastate to the designated person, the vendee is not prohibited from receiving unless the transaction is itself interstate. Similarly, 922 (g) prohibits the same categories of potentially irresponsible persons from shipping or transporting any firearm in interstate commerce or, see 18 U.S. C. 2 (b), causing it to be shipped interstate. Petitioner's proposed narrow construction of 922 (h) would reduce that section to a near redundancy with 922 (g), since almost every interstate shipment is likely to have been solicited or otherwise caused by the direct recipient. That proposed narrow construction would also *219 create another anomaly: if a prohibited person seeks to buy from his local dealer a firearm that is not currently in the dealer's stock, and the dealer then orders it interstate, that person violates 922 (h), but under the suggested construction, he would not violate 922 (h) if the firearm were already on the dealer's shelf. We note, too, that other sections of the Act clearly apply to and regulate intrastate sales of a gun that has moved in intrastate commerce. For example, the licensing provisions, 922 (a) (1) and 923 (a), apply to exclusively intrastate, as well as interstate, activity. Under 922 (d), as noted above, a licensee may not knowingly sell a firearm to any prohibited person, even if the sale is intrastate. Sections 922 (c) and (a) (6), relating, respectively, to a physical presence at the place of purchase and to the giving of false information, apply to intrastate as well as to interstate transactions. So, too, do 922 (b) (2) and (5). Construing 922 (h) as applicable to an intrastate retail sale that has been preceded by movement of the firearm in interstate commerce is thus consistent with the entire pattern of the Act. To confine 922 (h) to direct interstate receipts would result in having the Gun Control Act cover every aspect of intrastate transactions in firearms except receipt. This, however, and obviously, is the most crucial of all. Congress surely did not intend to except from the direct prohibitions of the statute the very act it went to such pains to prevent indirectly, through complex provisions, in the other sections of the Act. C. The legislative history is fully supportive of our construction of 922 (h). The Gun Control Act of |
Justice Blackmun | 1,976 | 11 | majority | Barrett v. United States | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/109341/barrett-v-united-states/ | our construction of 922 (h). The Gun Control Act of 1968 was an amended and, for present purposes, a substantially identical version of Title IV of the Omnibus Crime *220 Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968. Each of the statutes enlarged and extended the Federal Firearms Act, (1938). Section 922 (h), although identical in its operative phrase with 2 (f) of the Federal Firearms Act, expanded the categories of persons prohibited from receiving firearms.[5] The new Act also added many prophylactic provisions, hereinabove referred to, governing intrastate as well as interstate transactions. See Zimring, Firearms and Federal Law: The Gun Control Act of 1968, 4 J. Legal Studies 133 But the 1938 Act, it was said, was designed "to prevent the crook and gangster, racketeer and fugitive from justice from being able to purchase or in any way come in contact with firearms of any kind." S. Rep. No. 1189, 75th Cong., 1st Sess., 33 (1937). Nothing we have found in the committee reports or hearings on the 1938 legislation indicates any intention on the part of Congress to confine 2 (f) to direct interstate receipt of firearms. The history of the 1968 Act reflects a similar concern with keeping firearms out of the hands of categories of potentially irresponsible persons, including convicted felons. Its broadly stated principal purpose was "to make it possible to keep firearms out of the hands of those not legally entitled to possess them because of age, criminal background, or incompetency." S. Rep. No. 1501, 90th Cong., 2d Sess., 22 (1968). See also 114 Cong. Rec. 13219 (1968) (remarks by Sen. Tydings); -825. Congressman Celler, the House Manager, expressed the same concern: "This bill seeks to maximize the possibility *221 of keeping firearms out of the hands of such persons." 114 Cong. Rec. 21784 (1968); In the light of this principal purpose, Congress could not have intended that the broad and unambiguous language of 922 (h) was to be confined, as petitioner suggests, to direct interstate receipts. That suggestion would remove from the statute the most usual transaction, namely, the felon's purchase or receipt from his local dealer. III Two statements of this Court in past cases, naturally relied upon by petitioner, deserve mention. The first is an observation made over 30 years ago in reference to the 1938 Act's 2 (f), the predecessor of 922 (h): "Both courts below held that the offense created by the Act is confined to the receipt of firearms or ammunition as a part of interstate transportation and does not extend to the receipt, in an intrastate transaction, |
Justice Blackmun | 1,976 | 11 | majority | Barrett v. United States | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/109341/barrett-v-united-states/ | does not extend to the receipt, in an intrastate transaction, of such articles which, at some prior time, have been transported interstate. The Government agrees that this construction is correct." Tot v. United In that case, the Court held that the presumption contained in 2 (f), to the effect that "the possession of a firearm or ammunition by any such person [one convicted of a crime of violence or a fugitive from justice] shall be presumptive evidence that such firearm or ammunition was shipped or transported or received, as the case may be, by such person in violation of this Act," was violative of due process. The quoted observation, of course, is merely a recital as to what the District Court and the Court of Appeals in that case had held and a further statement that the Government had agreed that the construction by the *222 lower courts was correct. Having made this observation, the Court then understandably moved on to the only issue in Tot, namely, the validity of the statutory presumption. The fact that the Government long ago took a narrow position on the reach of the 1938 Act may not serve to help its posture here, when it seemingly argues to the contrary, but it does not prevent the Government from arguing that the current gun control statute is broadly based and reaches a purchase such as that made by Barrett.[6] The second statement is more recent and appears in United supra.[7] The comment, of course, is dictum, for had to do with a prosecution under 18 U.S. C. App. 1202 (a), a provision which was part of Title VII, not of Title IV, of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, as amended. Section 1202 (a) concerned any member of stated categories of persons "who receives, possesses, or transports in commerce or affecting commerce any firearm." The Government contended that the statute did not require proof of a connection with interstate commerce. The Court held, however, that the statute was ambiguous and that, therefore, it must be read to require such a nexus. In so holding, the Court noted the connection between Title VII and Title IV, and observed that although subsections *223 of the two Titles addressed their prohibitions to some of the same people, each also reached groups not reached by the other. Then followed the dictum in question. The Court went on to state: "While the reach of Title IV itself is a question to be decided finally some other day, the Government has presented here no learning or other |
Justice Blackmun | 1,976 | 11 | majority | Barrett v. United States | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/109341/barrett-v-united-states/ | day, the Government has presented here no learning or other evidence indicating that the 1968 Act changed the prior approach to the `receipt' offense." n. 10. The dictum was just another observation made in passing as the Court proceeded to consider 1202 (a). The observation went so far as to intimate that Title IV was to be limited even with respect to a transaction possessing an interstate commerce nexus, a situation that Barrett here concedes is covered by 922 (h). In any event, the Court, by its statement in n. 10 of the opinion, reserved the question of the reach of Title IV for "some other day." That day is now at hand, with Barrett's case before us. And it is at hand with the benefit of full briefing and an awareness of the plain language of 922 (h), of the statute's position in the structure of the entire Act, and of the legislative aims and purpose. Furthermore, we are not willing to decide the present case on the assumption that Congress, in passing the Gun Control Act 25 years after Tot was decided, had the Court's casual recital in Tot in mind when it used language identical to that in the 1938 Act.[8] There is *224 one mention of Tot in the debates, 114 Cong. Rec. 21807 (1968), and one mention in the reports, S. Rep. No. 1097, 90th Cong., 2d Sess., 272 (1968) (additional views of Sens. Dirksen, Hruska, Thurmond, and Burdick). These reflect a concern with the fact that Tot eliminated the presumption of interstate movement, thus increasing the burden of proof on the Government. They do not focus on what showing was necessary to carry that burden of proof. Similarly, the few references to Tot in the hearings reflect objections to the elimination of the presumption, but mention only in passing the type of proof that the witness believed was necessary to satisfy 2 (f). See, e. g., Hearings on S. 1, Amendment 90 to S. 1, S. 1853, and S. 1854 before Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 90th Cong., 1st Sess., 46 (1967); Hearings on H. R. 5037, H. R. 5038, H. R. 5384, H. R. 5385, and H. R. 5386 before Subcommittee No. 5 of the House Committee on the Judiciary, 90th Cong., 1st Sess., 561-562, 564, 677-678. Nothing in this legislative history persuades us that Congress intended to adopt Tot's limited interpretation. If we were to conclude otherwise, we would fly in the face of, and ignore, obvious congressional intent at the price of a passing |
Justice Souter | 1,992 | 20 | majority | Nationwide Mut. Ins. Co. v. Darden | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/112710/nationwide-mut-ins-co-v-darden/ | In this case we construe the term "employee" as it appears in 3(6) of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), 29 U.S. C. 1002(6), and read it to incorporate traditional agency law criteria for identifying master-servant relationships. I From 1962 through 1980, respondent Robert operated an insurance agency according to the terms of several *320 contracts he signed with petitioners Nationwide Mutual Insurance et al. promised to sell only Nationwide insurance policies, and, in exchange, Nationwide agreed to pay him commissions on his sales and enroll him in a company retirement scheme called the "Agent's Security Compensation Plan" (Plan). The Plan consisted of two different programs: the "Deferred Compensation Incentive Credit Plan," under which Nationwide annually credited an agent's retirement account with a sum based on his business performance, and the "Extended Earnings Plan," under which Nationwide paid an agent, upon retirement or termination, a sum equal to the total of his policy renewal fees for the previous 12 months. Such were the contractual terms, however, that would forfeit his entitlement to the Plan's benefits if, within a year of his termination and 25 miles of his prior business location, he sold insurance for Nationwide's competitors. The contracts also disqualified him from receiving those benefits if, after he stopped representing Nationwide, he ever induced a Nationwide policyholder to cancel one of its policies. In November 1980, Nationwide exercised its contractual right to end its relationship with A month later, became an independent insurance agent and, doing business from his old office, sold insurance policies for several of Nationwide's competitors. The company reacted with the charge that his new business activities disqualified him from receiving the Plan benefits to which he would have been entitled otherwise. then sued for the benefits, which he claimed were nonforfeitable because already vested under the terms of ERISA. 29 U.S. C. 1053(a). brought his action under 29 U.S. C. 1132(a), which enables a benefit plan "participant" to enforce the substantive provisions of ERISA. The Act elsewhere defines "participant" as "any employee or former employee of an employer who is or may become eligible to receive a benefit *321 of any type from an employee benefit plan" 1002(7). Thus, 's ERISA claim can succeed only if he was Nationwide's "employee," a term the Act defines as "any individual employed by an employer." 1002(6). It was on this point that the District Court granted summary judgment to Nationwide. After applying common-law agency principles and, to an extent unspecified, our decision in United the court found that "`the total factual context' of Mr. 's relationship |
Justice Souter | 1,992 | 20 | majority | Nationwide Mut. Ins. Co. v. Darden | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/112710/nationwide-mut-ins-co-v-darden/ | found that "`the total factual context' of Mr. 's relationship with Nationwide shows that he was an independent contractor and not an employee." App. to Pet. for Cert. 47a, 50a, quoting The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit vacated. After observing that " most probably would not qualify as an employee" under traditional principles of agency law, it found the traditional definition inconsistent with the "`declared policy and purposes' " of ERISA, quoting and and specifically with the congressional statement of purpose found in 2 of the Act, 29 U.S. C. 1001.[1] It therefore held that an ERISA plaintiff can qualify as an "employee" simply by showing "(1) that he had a reasonable expectation that he would receive [pension] benefits, (2) that he relied on this expectation, and (3) that he lacked the economic bargaining power to contract out of [benefit plan] forfeiture provisions." *322 ). The court remanded the case to the District Court, which then found that had been Nationwide's "employee" under the standard set by the Court of Appeals. The Court of Appeals affirmed.[2] In due course, Nationwide filed a petition for certiorari, which we granted on October 15, We now reverse. II We have often been asked to construe the meaning of "employee" where the statute containing the term does not helpfully define it. Most recently we confronted this problem in Community for Creative a case in which a sculptor and a nonprofit group each claimed copyright ownership in a statue the group had commissioned from the artist. The dispute ultimately turned on whether, by the terms of 101 of the Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S. C. 101, the statue had been "prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment." Because the Copyright Act nowhere defined the term "employee," we unanimously applied the "well established" principle that "[w]here Congress uses terms that have accumulated settled meaning under the common law, a court must infer, unless the statute otherwise dictates, that Congress means to incorporate the established meaning of these terms. In the past, when Congress has used the term `employee' without defining it, we have concluded that Congress intended to describe the conventional *323 master-servant relationship as understood by common-law agency doctrine. See, e. g., ; ;" -740 While we supported this reading of the Copyright Act with other observations, the general rule stood as independent authority for the decision. So too should it stand here. ERISA's nominal definition of "employee" as "any individual employed by an employer," 29 U.S. C. 1002(6), is completely circular and explains nothing. |
Justice Souter | 1,992 | 20 | majority | Nationwide Mut. Ins. Co. v. Darden | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/112710/nationwide-mut-ins-co-v-darden/ | 29 U.S. C. 1002(6), is completely circular and explains nothing. As for the rest of the Act, does not cite, and we do not find, any provision either giving specific guidance on the term's meaning or suggesting that construing it to incorporate traditional agency law principles would thwart the congressional design or lead to absurd results. Thus, we adopt a common-law test for determining who qualifies as an "employee" under ERISA,[3] a test we most recently summarized in Reid: "In determining whether a hired party is an employee under the general common law of agency, we consider the hiring party's right to control the manner and means by which the product is accomplished. Among the other factors relevant to this inquiry are the skill required; the source of the instrumentalities and tools; the location of the work; the duration of the relationship between the parties; whether the hiring party has the right to assign additional projects to the hired party; the extent of the hired party's discretion over when and how long to work; the method of payment; the hired *324 party's role in hiring and paying assistants; whether the work is part of the regular business of the hiring party; whether the hiring party is in business; the provision of employee benefits; and the tax treatment of the hired party." -752 Cf. Restatement (Second) of Agency 220(2) (1958) (listing nonexhaustive criteria for identifying master-servant relationship); Rev. Rul. 87-41, 1987-1 Cum. Bull. 296, 298-299 (setting forth 20 factors as guides in determining whether an individual qualifies as a common-law "employee" in various tax law contexts). Since the common-law test contains "no shorthand formula or magic phrase that can be applied to find the answer, all of the incidents of the relationship must be assessed and weighed with no one factor being decisive." In taking its different tack, the Court of Appeals cited -129, and United 331 U. S., for the proposition that "the content of the term `employee' in the context of a particular federal statute is `to be construed "in the light of the mischief to be corrected and the end to be attained."` " 796 F. 2d, quoting in turn quoting But and which interpreted "employee" for purposes of the National Labor Relations Act and Social Security Act, respectively, are feeble precedents for unmooring the term from the common law. In each case, the Court read "employee," which neither statute helpfully defined,[4] to imply something broader than the common-law definition; after each opinion, Congress *325 amended the statute so construed to demonstrate that the usual common-law principles were |
Justice Souter | 1,992 | 20 | majority | Nationwide Mut. Ins. Co. v. Darden | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/112710/nationwide-mut-ins-co-v-darden/ | so construed to demonstrate that the usual common-law principles were the keys to meaning. See United Ins. ("Congressional reaction to [] was adverse and Congress passed an amendment. [t]he obvious purpose of [which] was to have the courts apply general agency principles in distinguishing between employees and independent contractors under the Act"); Social Security Act of 18, ch. 468, 1(a), (18) ; see also United States v. W. M. Webb, (discussing congressional reaction to ). To be sure, Congress did not, strictly speaking, "overrule" our interpretation of those statutes, since the Constitution invests the Judiciary, not the Legislature, with the final power to construe the law. But a principle of statutory construction can endure just so many legislative revisitations, and Reid `s presumption that Congress means an agency law definition for "employee" unless it clearly indicates otherwise signaled our abandonment of `s emphasis on construing that term "`in the light of the mischief to be corrected and the end to be attained.' " quoting At oral argument, tried to subordinate Reid to Rutherford which adopted a broad reading of "employee" under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). And amicus United States, while rejecting 's position, also relied on Rutherford for the proposition that, when enacting ERISA, Congress must have intended a modified common-law definition of "employee" that would advance, in a way not defined, the Act's "remedial purposes." Brief for United States as Ami- *326 cus Curiae 15-21.[5] But Rutherfood supports neither position. The definition of "employee" in the FLSA evidently derives from the child labor statutes, see Rutherford and, on its face, goes beyond its ERISA counterpart. While the FLSA, like ERISA, defines an "employee" to include "any individual employed by an employer," it defines the verb "employ" expansively to mean "suffer or permit to work." 3, codified at 29 U.S. C. 203(e), (g). This latter definition, whose striking breadth we have previously noted, Rutherford stretches the meaning of "employee" to cover some parties who might not qualify as such under a strict application of traditional agency law principles. ERISA lacks any such provision, however, and the textual asymmetry between the two statutes precludes reliance on FLSA cases when construing ERISA's concept of "employee." Quite apart from its inconsistency with our precedents, the Fourth Circuit's analysis reveals an approach infected with circularity and unable to furnish predictable results. Applying the first element of its test, which ostensibly enquires into an employee's "expectations," the Court of Appeals concluded that Nationwide had "created a reasonable expectation on the `employees' part that benefits would be paid to them in the future," 796 |
Justice Souter | 1,992 | 20 | majority | Nationwide Mut. Ins. Co. v. Darden | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/112710/nationwide-mut-ins-co-v-darden/ | benefits would be paid to them in the future," 796 F. 2d, by establishing "a comprehensive retirement benefits program for its insurance agents," The court thought it was simply irrelevant that the forfeiture clause in 's contract "limited" his expectation of receiving pension benefits, since "it is precisely that sort of employer-imposed condition on the employee's anticipations that Congress intended to outlaw *327 with the enactment of ERISA." n. 7 Thus, the Fourth Circuit's test would turn not on a claimant's actual "expectations," which the court effectively deemed inconsequential, ib but on his statutory entitlement to relief, which itself depends on his very status as an "employee." This begs the question. This circularity infects the test's second prong as well, which considers the extent to which a claimant has relied on his "expectation" of benefits by "remaining for `long years,' or a substantial period of time, in the `employer's' service, and by foregoing other significant means of providing for [his] retirement." While this enquiry is ostensibly factual, we have seen already that one of its objects may not be: to the extent that actual "expectations" are (as in 's case) unnecessary to relief, the nature of a claimant's required "reliance" is left unclear. Moreover, any enquiry into "reliance," whatever it might entail, could apparently lead to different results for claimants holding identical jobs and enrolled in identical plans. Because, for example, failed to make much independent provision for his retirement, he satisfied the "reliance" prong of the Fourth Circuit's test, see whereas a more provident colleague who signed exactly the same contracts, but saved for a rainy day, might not. Any such approach would severely compromise the capacity of companies like Nationwide to figure out who their "employees" are and what, by extension, their pension-fund obligations will be. To be sure, the traditional agency law criteria offer no paradigm of determinacy. But their application generally turns on factual variables within an employer's knowledge, thus permitting categorical judgments about the "employee" status of claimants with similar job descriptions. Agency law principles comport, moreover, with our recent precedents and with the common understanding, reflected in those precedents, of the difference between an employee and an independent contractor. *328 III While the Court of Appeals noted that " most probably would not qualify as an employee" under traditional agency law principles, it did not actually decide that issue. We therefore reverse the judgment and remand the case to that court for proceedings consistent with this opinion. So ordered. *329 |
Justice Stevens | 1,996 | 16 | dissenting | Lewis v. Casey | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/118054/lewis-v-casey/ | The Fourteenth Amendment prohibits the s from depriving any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. While at least one 19th-century court characterized the prison inmate as a mere "slave of the" in recent decades this Court has repeatedly held that the convicted felon's loss of liberty is not total. See ; e. g., "Prison walls do notseparat[e] inmatesfrom the protections of the Constitution," 482 U. S., at and even convicted criminals retain some of the liberties enjoyed by all who live outside those walls in communities to which most prisoners will someday return. Within the residuum of liberty retained by prisoners are freedoms identified in the First Amendment to the Constitution: *405 freedom to worship according to the dictates of their own conscience, e. g., ; 405 U. S., at freedom to communicate with the outside world, e. g., and the freedom to petition their government for a redress of grievances, e. g., While the exercise of these freedoms may of course be regulated and constrained by their custodians, they may not be obliterated either actively or passively. Indeed, our cases make it clear that the s must take certain affirmative steps to protect some of the essential aspects of liberty that might not otherwise survive in the controlled prison environment. The "well-established" right of access to the courts, ante, at 350, is one of these aspects of liberty that s must affirmatively protect. Where s provide for appellate review of criminal convictions, for example, they have an affirmative duty to make transcripts available to indigent prisoners free of charge. ; see also It also protects an inmate's right to file complaints, whether meritorious or not, see Ex parte Hull, and an inmate's right to have access to fellow inmates who are able to assist an inmate in preparing, "with reasonable adequacy," such complaints. Johnson, ;[1] And for almost two decades, it has explicitly *406 included the right of prisoners to have access to "adequate law libraries or adequate assistance from persons trained in the law." As the Court points out, s are free to "experiment" with the types of legal assistance that they provide to inmates, ante, at 352-as long as the experiment provides adequate access. The constitutional violations alleged in this case are similar to those that the District Court previously found in one of Arizona's nine prisons. See aff'd, The complaint in this case was filed in 1990 by 22 prisoners on behalf of a class including all inmates in the Arizona prison system. The prisoners alleged that the 's institutions provided |
Justice Stevens | 1,996 | 16 | dissenting | Lewis v. Casey | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/118054/lewis-v-casey/ | prison system. The prisoners alleged that the 's institutions provided inadequate access to legal materials or other assistance, App. 31-33, and that as a result, "[p]risoners are harmed by the denial of meaningful access to the courts." The District Court agreed, concluding that the had failed, throughout its prison system, to provide adequate access to legal materials, particularly for those in administrative segregation, *407 or "lockdown," and that the had failed to provide adequate legal assistance to illiterate and non-English speaking inmates. After giving all the parties an opportunity to participate in the process of drafting the remedy, the court entered a detailed (and I agree excessively so, see infra, at 409) order to correct the 's violations. As I understand the record, the has not argued that the right of effective access to the courts, as articulated in Bounds, should be limited in any way. It has not challenged the standing of the named plaintiffs to represent the class, nor has it questioned the propriety of the District Court's order allowing the case to proceed as a class action. I am also unaware of any objection having been made in the District Court to the plaintiffs' constitutional standing in this case, and the appears to have conceded standing with respect to most claims in the Court of Appeals.[2] Yet the majority chooses to address these issues unnecessarily and, in some instances, incorrectly. For example, although injury in fact certainly is a jurisdictional issue into which we inquire absent objection from the parties, even the majority finds on the record that at least two of the plaintiffs had standing in this case, ante, at 356,[3]*408 which should be sufficient to satisfy any constitutional concerns.[4] Yet the Court spends 10 pages disagreeing. Even if we had reason to delve into standing requirements in this case, the Court's view of those requirements is excessively strict. I think it perfectly clear that the prisoners had standing, even absent the specific examples of failed complaints. There is a constitutional right to effective access, and if a prisoner alleges that he personally has been denied that right, he has standing to sue.[5] One of our first cases to address directly the right of access to the courts illustrates this principle particularly well. In Ex parte Hull, we reviewed the constitutionality of a state prison's rule that impeded an inmate's access to the courts. The rule authorized corrections officers to intercept mail addressed to a court and refer it to the legal investigator for the parole board to determine whether there was sufficient merit in the |
Justice Stevens | 1,996 | 16 | dissenting | Lewis v. Casey | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/118054/lewis-v-casey/ | board to determine whether there was sufficient merit in the claim to justify its submission to a court. Meritless claims were simply not delivered. Petitioner Hull succeeded in smuggling papers to his father, who in turn delivered them to this Court. Although we held that the smuggled petition had insufficient merit even to require an answer from the *409 we nevertheless held that the regulation was invalid for the simple and sufficient reason that "the state and its officers may not abridge or impair petitioner's right to apply to a federal court for writ of habeas corpus." At first glance, the novel approach adopted by the Court today suggests that only those prisoners who have been refused the opportunity to file claims later found to have arguable merit should be able to challenge a rule as clearly unconstitutional as the one addressed in Hull. Perhaps the standard is somewhat lower than it appears in the first instance; using Hull as an example, the Court suggests that even facially meritless petitions can provide a sufficient basis for standing. See ante, at 352, n. 2. Nonetheless, because prisoners are uniquely subject to the control of the and because unconstitutional restrictions on the right of access to the courtswhether through nearly absolute bars like that in Hull or through inadequate legal resourcesfrustrate the ability of prisoners to identify, articulate, and present to courts injuries flowing from that control, I believe that any prisoner who claims to be impeded by such barriers has alleged constitutionally sufficient injury in fact. My disagreement with the Court is not complete: I am persuadedas respondents' counsel essentially has concededthat the relief ordered by the District Court was broader than necessary to redress the constitutional violations identified in the District Court's findings. I therefore agree that the case should be remanded. I cannot agree, however, with the Court's decision to use the case as an opportunity to meander through the laws of standing and access to the courts, expanding standing requirements here and limiting rights there,[6] when the most obvious concern in *410 the case is with the simple disjunct between the limited scope of the injuries articulated in the District Court's findings and the remedy it ordered as a result. Because most or all of petitioners' concerns regarding the order could be addressed with a simple remand, I see no need to resolve the other constitutional issues that the Court reaches out to address. The Court is well aware that much of its discussion preceding Part III is unnecessary to the decision. Reflecting on its view that the |
Justice Stevens | 1,996 | 16 | dissenting | Lewis v. Casey | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/118054/lewis-v-casey/ | unnecessary to the decision. Reflecting on its view that the District Court railroaded the into accepting its order lock, stock, and barrel, the Court concludes on the last page of its decision that "[t]he was entitled to far more than an opportunity for rebuttal, and on that ground alone this order would have to be set aside." Ante, at 363. To the extent that the majority suggests that the order in this case is flawed because of a breakdown in the process of court-supervised negotiation that should generally precede systemic relief, I agree with it. I also agree that the failure in that process "alone " would justify a remand *411 in this case. I emphatically disagree, however, with the Court's characterization of who is most to blame for the objectionable character of the final order. Much of the blame for its breadth, I propose, can be placed squarely in the lap of the A fair evaluation of the procedures followed in this case must begin with a reference to the earlier case in which the same District Judge found petitioners guilty of a systemic constitutional violation in one facility. In that case the District Court expressly found that the state officials had demonstrated "a callous unwillingness to face the issues" and had pursued "diversion[ary] tactics" that "forced [the court] to take extraordinary measures." 1314. Despite the Court's request that they propose an appropriate remedy, the officials refused to do so. It is apparent that these defense tactics played an important role in the court's decision to appoint a Special Master to assistin the fashioning of the remedy that was ordered in Only after that order had been affirmed by the Court of Appeals did respondents commence this action seeking to obtain similar relief for the entire inmate population. After a trial that lasted for 11 days over the course of two months, the District Court found that several of petitioners' policies denied illiterate and non-English-speaking prisoners meaningful access to the courts. Given the precedent established in the express approval of that plan by the Court of Appeals, and the District Court's evaluation of the 's conclusions regarding the likelihood of voluntary remedial schemes, particularly in view of the 's unwillingness to play a constructive role in the remedy stage of that case, the District Court not unreasonably entered an order appointing the same Special Master and directing him to propose a similar remedy in this case. Although the District Court instructed the parties to submit specific objections to the remedial template derived from see App. to Pet. for Cert. |
Justice Stevens | 1,996 | 16 | dissenting | Lewis v. Casey | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/118054/lewis-v-casey/ | remedial template derived from see App. to Pet. for Cert. 89a, nothing in the court's order prevented the *412 from submitting its own proposals without waiving its right to challenge the findings on the liability issues or its right to object to any remedial proposals by either the Master or the respondents. The District Court also told the parties that it would consider settlement offers, and instructed the Master to provide "such guidance and counsel as either of the parties may request to effect such a settlement." at 95a. In response to these invitations to participate in the remedial process, the filed only four half-hearted sets of written objections over the course of the six months during which the Special Master was evaluating the court's proposed order. See App. 218-221, 225-228, 231-238, and 239240. Although the Master rejected about half of these narrow objections, he accepted about an equal number, noting that the 's limited formal participation had been "important" and "very helpful." Proposed Order (Permanent Injunction) in No. CIV 90-0054 (D. Ariz.), p. iii. After the Master released his proposed order, the offered another round of objections. See App. 243-250. Although the District Court informed the Master that the objections could be considered, they did not have to be; the court reasonably noted that the had been aware for six months about the potential scope of the order, and that it could have mounted the same objections prior to the deadline that the court had set at the beginning of the process. One might have imagined that the faced with the potential of this "inordinatelyindeed, wildlyintrusive" remedial scheme, ante, at 362, would have taken more care to protect its interests before the District Court and the Special Master, particularly given the express willingness of both to consider the 's objections. Having failed to zealously represent its interests in the District Court, the 's present complaints seem rather belated; the Court has generally been less than solicitous to claims that have *413 not been adequately pressed below. Cf., e. g., ; compare ante, at 363364, n. 8 ( made boilerplate reservation of rights in each set of objections), with Gray v. Netherland, ante, at 163 ("[I]t is not enough to make a general appeal to a constitutional guarantee as broad as due process to present the `substance' of such a claim to a state court"). The 's lack of interest in representing its interests is clear not only from the sparse objections in the District Court, but from proceedings both here and in the Court of Appeals. In argument before |
Justice Stevens | 1,996 | 16 | dissenting | Lewis v. Casey | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/118054/lewis-v-casey/ | here and in the Court of Appeals. In argument before both courts, counsel for the prisoners have conceded that certain aspects of the consent decree exceeded the necessary relief. See, e. g., ; Tr. of Oral Arg. 31 (provisions regarding noise in library are unnecessary). This flexibility further suggests that the could have sought relief from aspects of the plan through negotiation. Indeed, at oral argument in the Ninth Circuit, the parties for both sides suggested that they were willing to settle the case, and the court deferred submission of the case for 30 days to enable a settlement. "However, before the settlement process had even begun, [the ] declined to mediate." n. 1. Notably, this is the only comment made by the appellate court regarding the process that led to the fashioning of the remedy in this case. A fair reading of the record, therefore, reveals that the had more than six months within which it could have initiated settlement discussions, presented more ambitious objections to the proposed decree reflecting the concerns it has raised before this Court, or offered up its own plan for the review of the plaintiffs and the Special Master. It took none of these steps. Instead, it settled for piecemeal and belated challenges to the scope of the proposed plan. The Court implies that the District Court's decision to use the decree entered in as the starting point for fashioning *414 the relief to be ordered was unfair to petitioners and should not be repeated in comparable circumstances. The browbeaten the Court suggests, was "entitled to far more than an opportunity for rebuttal." Ante, at 363. I strongly disagree with this characterization of the process. Whether this Court now approves or disapproves of the contents of the decree, the Court of Appeals had affirmed it in its entirety when this case was tried, and it was surely appropriate for the District Court to use it as a startingpoint for its remedial task in this case. Petitioners were represented by competent counsel who could have advanced their own proposals for relief if they had thought it expedient to do so. By going further than necessary to correct the excesses of the order, the Court's decision rewards the for the uncooperative posture it has assumed throughout the long period of litigating both and this case. See ante, at 354-355; -1316. Although the 's approach has proven sound as a matter of tactics, allowing it to prevail in a forum that is not as inhibited by precedent as are other federal courts, the Court's decision undermines the |
Justice Souter | 1,995 | 20 | majority | Jerome B. Grubart, Inc. v. Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Co. | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/117900/jerome-b-grubart-inc-v-great-lakes-dredge-dock-co/ | On April 13, 1992, water from the Chicago poured into a freight tunnel running under the river and thence into the basements of buildings in the downtown Chicago Loop Allegedly, the flooding resulted from events several months earlier, when respondent Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Company had used a crane, sitting on a barge in the river next to a bridge, to drive piles into the riverbed above the tunnel The issue before us is whether a court of the United States has admiralty jurisdiction to determine and limit the extent of Great Lakes's tort liability We hold this suit to be within federal admiralty jurisdiction *530 I The complaint, together with affidavits subject to no objection, alleges the following facts In 1990, Great Lakes bid on a contract with petitioner city of Chicago to replace wooden pilings clustered around the piers of several bridges spanning the Chicago a navigable waterway within the meaning of The Daniel Ball, See Escanaba The pilings (called dolphins) keep ships from bumping into the piers and so protect both After winning the contract, Great Lakes carried out the work with two barges towed by a tug One barge carried pilings; the other carried a crane that pulled out old pilings and helped drive in new ones In August and September Great Lakes replaced the pilings around the piers projecting into the river and supporting the Kinzie Street Bridge After towing the cranecarrying barge into position near one of the piers, Great Lakes's employees secured the barge to the riverbed with spuds, or long metal legs that project down from the barge and anchor it The workers then used the crane on the barge to pull up old pilings, stow them on the other barge, and drive new pilings into the riverbed around the piers About seven months later, an eddy formed in the river near the bridge as the collapsing walls or ceiling of a freight tunnel running under the river opened the tunnel to river water, which flowed through to flood buildings in the Loop After the flood, many of the victims brought actions in state court against Great Lakes and the city of Chicago, claiming that in the course of replacing the pilings Great Lakes had negligently weakened the tunnel structure, which Chicago (its owner) had not properly maintained Great Lakes then brought this lawsuit in the United States District Court, invoking federal admiralty jurisdiction Count I of the complaint seeks the protection of the Limitation of Vessel Owner's Liability Act (Limitation Act), 46 US C App 181 et seq, a statute |
Justice Souter | 1,995 | 20 | majority | Jerome B. Grubart, Inc. v. Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Co. | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/117900/jerome-b-grubart-inc-v-great-lakes-dredge-dock-co/ | Act), 46 US C App 181 et seq, a statute that would, in effect, permit the admiralty *531 court to decide whether Great Lakes committed a tort and, if so, to limit Great Lakes's liability to the value of the vessels (the tug and two barges) involved if the tort was committed "without the privity or knowledge" of the vessels' owner, 46 US C App 183(a) Counts II and III of Great Lakes's complaint ask for indemnity and contribution from the city for any resulting loss to Great Lakes The city, joined by petitioner Jerome B Grubart, Inc, one of the state-court plaintiffs, filed a motion to dismiss this suit for lack of admiralty jurisdiction Fed Rule Civ Proc 12(b)(1) The District Court granted the motion, the Seventh Circuit reversed, Great Lakes Dredge & Dock and we granted certiorari, We now affirm II The parties do not dispute the Seventh Circuit's conclusion that jurisdiction as to Counts II and III (indemnity and contribution) hinges on jurisdiction over the Count I claim See n 9; see also 28 US C 1367 (1988 ed, Supp V) (supplemental jurisdiction); Fed Rules Civ Proc 14(a) and (c) (impleader of third parties) Thus, the issue is simply whether or not a federal admiralty court has jurisdiction over claims that Great Lakes's faulty replacement work caused the flood damage A A federal court's authority to hear cases in admiralty flows initially from the Constitution, which "extend[s]" federal judicial power "to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction" U S Const, Art III, 2 Congress has embodied that power in a statute giving federal district courts "original jurisdiction of [a]ny civil case of admiralty or maritime jurisdiction " 28 US C 1333(1) The traditional test for admiralty tort jurisdiction asked only whether the tort occurred on navigable waters If it did, admiralty jurisdiction followed; if it did not, admiralty *532 jurisdiction did not exist See, e g, (No 13902) (CC Me 1813) (Story, J, on Circuit) This ostensibly simple locality test was complicated by the rule that the injury had to be "wholly" sustained on navigable waters for the tort to be within admiralty The Plymouth, Thus, admiralty courts lacked jurisdiction over, say, a claim following a ship's collision with a pier insofar as it injured the pier, for admiralty law treated the pier as an extension of the land ; Cleveland Terminal & Valley R This latter rule was changed in 1948, however, when Congress enacted the Extension of Admiralty Jurisdiction Act, The Act provided that "[t]he admiralty and maritime jurisdiction of the United States shall |
Justice Souter | 1,995 | 20 | majority | Jerome B. Grubart, Inc. v. Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Co. | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/117900/jerome-b-grubart-inc-v-great-lakes-dredge-dock-co/ | "[t]he admiralty and maritime jurisdiction of the United States shall extend to and include all cases of damage or injury, to person or property, caused by a vessel on navigable water, notwithstanding that such damage or injury be done or consummated on land" 46 US C App 740 The purpose of the Act was to end concern over the sometimes confusing line between land and water, by investing admiralty with jurisdiction over "all cases" where the injury was caused by a ship or other vessel on navigable water, even if such injury occurred on land See, e g, ; Executive Aviation, (2) After this congressional modification to gather the odd case into admiralty, the jurisdictional rule was qualified again in three decisions of this Court aimed at keeping a different class of odd cases out In the first case, Executive tort claims arose out of the wreck of an airplane that collided with a flock of birds just after takeoff on a domestic *533 flight and fell into the navigable waters of Lake Erie We held that admiralty lacked jurisdiction to consider the claims We wrote that "a purely mechanical application of the locality test" was not always "sensible" or "consonant with the purposes of maritime law," as when (for example) the literal and universal application of the locality rule would require admiralty courts to adjudicate tort disputes between colliding swimmers, We held that "claims arising from airplane accidents are not cognizable in admiralty" despite the location of the harm, unless "the wrong bear[s] a significant relationship to traditional maritime activity" The second decision, Ins dealt with tort claims arising out of the collision of two pleasure boats in a navigable river estuary We held that admiralty courts had jurisdiction, even though jurisdiction existed only if "the wrong" had "a significant connection with traditional maritime activity," We conceded that pleasure boats themselves had little to do with the maritime commerce lying at the heart of the admiralty court's basic work, -675, but we nonetheless found the necessary relationship in "[t]he potential disruptive impact [upon maritime commerce] of a collision between boats on navigable waters, when coupled with the traditional concern that admiralty law holds for navigation" In the most recent of the trilogy, we held that a federal admiralty court had jurisdiction over tort claims arising when a fire, caused by a defective washer/dryer aboard a pleasure boat docked at a marina, burned the boat, other boats docked nearby, and the marina itself We elaborated on the enquiry exemplified in Executive and by focusing on two points to determine the |
Justice Souter | 1,995 | 20 | majority | Jerome B. Grubart, Inc. v. Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Co. | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/117900/jerome-b-grubart-inc-v-great-lakes-dredge-dock-co/ | Executive and by focusing on two points to determine the relationship of a claim to the objectives of admiralty jurisdiction We noted, first, that *5 the incident causing the harm, the burning of docked boats at a marina on navigable waters, was of a sort "likely to disrupt [maritime] commercial activity" Second, we found a "substantial relationship" with "traditional maritime activity" in the kind of activity from which the incident arose, "the storage and maintenance of a vessel on navigable waters" After then, a party seeking to invoke federal admiralty jurisdiction pursuant to 28 US C 1333(1) over a tort claim must satisfy conditions both of location and of connection with maritime activity A court applying the location test must determine whether the tort occurred on navigable water or whether injury suffered on land was caused by a vessel on navigable water 46 US C App 740 The connection test raises two issues A court, first, must "assess the general features of the type of incident involved," to determine whether the incident has "a potentially disruptive impact on maritime commerce," Second, a court must determine whether "the general character" of the "activity giving rise to the incident" shows a "substantial relationship to traditional maritime activity" and n 2 We now apply the tests to the facts of this suit B The location test is, of course, readily satisfied If Great Lakes caused the flood, it must have done so by weakening the structure of the tunnel while it drove in new pilings or removed old ones around the bridge piers The weakening presumably took place as Great Lakes's workers lifted and replaced the pilings with a crane that sat on a barge stationed in the Chicago The place in the river where the barge sat, and from which workers directed the crane, is in the "navigable waters of the United States" Escanaba Co, 107 U S, at Thus, if Great Lakes committed a tort, it must have done it while on navigable waters *535 It must also have done it "by a vessel" Even though the barge was fastened to the river bottom and was in use as a work platform at the times in question, at other times it was used for transportation See Petitioners do not here seriously dispute the conclusion of each court below that the Great Lakes barge is, for admiralty tort purposes, a "vessel" The fact that the pile driving was done with a crane makes no difference under the location test, given the maritime law that ordinarily treats an "appurtenance" attached to a vessel |
Justice Souter | 1,995 | 20 | majority | Jerome B. Grubart, Inc. v. Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Co. | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/117900/jerome-b-grubart-inc-v-great-lakes-dredge-dock-co/ | law that ordinarily treats an "appurtenance" attached to a vessel in navigable waters as part of the vessel itself See, e g, Victory (1); U S, at [1] Because the injuries suffered by Grubart and the other flood victims were caused by a vessel on navigable water, the location enquiry would seem to be at an end, "notwithstanding that such damage or injury [was] done or consummated on land" 46 US C App 740 Both Grubart and Chicago nonetheless ask us to subject the Extension Act to limitations not apparent from its text While they concede that the Act refers to "all cases of damage or injury," they argue that "all" must not mean literally every such case, no matter how great the distance between the vessel's tortious activity and the resulting harm They contend that, to be *536 within the Act, the damage must be close in time and space to the activity that caused it: that it must occur "reasonably contemporaneously" with the negligent conduct and no "farther from navigable waters than the reach of the vessel, its appurtenances and cargo" Brief for Petitioner in No 931094, p 45 (City Brief) For authority, they point to this Court's statement in that jurisdiction is present when the "impact" of the tortious activity "is felt ashore at a time and place not remote from the wrongful act" [2] The demerits of this argument lie not only in its want of textual support for its nonremoteness rule, but in its disregard of a less stringent but familiar proximity condition tied to the language of the statute The Act uses the phrase "caused by," which more than one Court of Appeals has read as requiring what tort law has traditionally called "proximate causation" See, e g, (CA4 5), cert denied, (6); (CA5 1), cert denied, (2) This classic tort notion normally eliminates the bizarre, cf and its use should obviate not only the complication but even the need for further temporal or spatial limitations Nor is reliance on familiar proximate causation inconsistent with which used its nonremote language, not to announce a special test, but simply to distinguish its own facts (the victim having slipped on beans spilling from cargo containers being unloaded from a ship) from what the Court called "[v]arious far-fetched hypotheticals," such as injury to someone slipping on beans that continue to leak from the *537 containers after they had been shipped from Puerto Rico to a warehouse in Denver US, See also Victory at The city responds by saying that, as a practical matter, the use of proximate |
Justice Souter | 1,995 | 20 | majority | Jerome B. Grubart, Inc. v. Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Co. | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/117900/jerome-b-grubart-inc-v-great-lakes-dredge-dock-co/ | saying that, as a practical matter, the use of proximate cause as a limiting jurisdictional principle would undesirably force an admiralty court to investigate the merits of the dispute at the outset of a case when it determined jurisdiction[3] The argument, of course, assumes that the truth of jurisdictional allegations must always be determined with finality at the threshold of litigation, but that assumption is erroneous Normal practice permits a party to establish jurisdiction at the outset of a case by means of a nonfrivolous assertion of jurisdictional elements, see, e g, ; 682- and any litigation of a contested subject-matter jurisdictional fact issue occurs in comparatively summary procedure *538 before a judge alone (as distinct from litigation of the same fact issue as an element of the cause of action, if the claim survives the jurisdictional objection) See 2A J Moore & J Lucas, Moore's Federal Practice ¶ 1207[21] ; 5A C Wright & A Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure 1350 There is no reason why this should not be just as true for proximate causation as it is for the maritime nature of the tortfeasor's activity giving rise to the incident See There is no need or justification, then, for imposing an additional nonremoteness hurdle in the name of jurisdiction C We now turn to the maritime connection enquiries, the first being whether the incident involved was of a sort with the potential to disrupt maritime commerce In we described the features of the incident in general terms as "a fire on a vessel docked at a marina on navigable waters," and determined that such an incident "plainly satisf[ied]" the first maritime connection requirement, ib because the fire could have "spread to nearby commercial vessels or ma[d]e the marina inaccessible to such vessels" and therefore "[c]ertainly" had a "potentially disruptive impact on maritime commerce," We noted that this first prong went to potential effects, not to the "particular facts of the incident," noting that in both Executive and we had focused not on the specific facts at hand but on whether the "general features" of the incident were "likely to disrupt commercial activity" The first test turns, then, on a description of the incident at an intermediate level of possible generality To speak of the incident as "fire" would have been too general to differentiate cases; at the other extreme, to have described the fire as damaging nothing but pleasure boats and their tie-up facilities would have ignored, among other things, the capacity of pleasure boats to endanger commercial *539 shipping that happened to be nearby We rejected |
Justice Souter | 1,995 | 20 | majority | Jerome B. Grubart, Inc. v. Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Co. | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/117900/jerome-b-grubart-inc-v-great-lakes-dredge-dock-co/ | commercial *539 shipping that happened to be nearby We rejected both extremes and instead asked whether the incident could be seen within a class of incidents that posed more than a fanciful risk to commercial shipping Following the "general features" of the incident at issue here may be described as damage by a vessel in navigable water to an underwater structure So characterized, there is little question that this is the kind of incident that has a "potentially disruptive impact on maritime commerce" As it actually turned out in this suit, damaging a structure beneath the riverbed could lead to a disruption in the water course itself,App 33 (eddy formed above the leak); and, again as it actually happened, damaging a structure so situated could lead to restrictions on the navigational use of the waterway during required repairs See Pet for Cert in No 93-1094, p 22a (District Court found that after the flood "[t]he river remained closed for over a month," "[r]iver traffic ceased, several commuter ferries were stranded, and many barges could not enter the river system because the river level was lowered to aid repair efforts") Cf Pennzoil Producing ; Marathon Pipe Line ; Orange Beach Water, Sewer, and Fire Protection In the second enquiry, we look to whether the general character of the activity giving rise to the incident shows a substantial relationship to traditional maritime activity We ask whether a tortfeasor's activity, commercial or noncommercial, on navigable waters is so closely related to activity traditionally subject to admiralty law that the reasons for applying special admiralty rules would apply in *540 the suit at hand Navigation of boats in navigable waters clearly falls within the substantial relationship, 457 U S, ; storing them at a marina on navigable waters is close enough, ; whereas in flying an airplane over the water, Executive as in swimming, -256, the relationship is too attenuated On like reasoning, the "activity giving rise to the incident" in this suit, should be characterized as repair or maintenance work on a navigable waterway performed from a vessel Described in this way, there is no question that the activity is substantially related to traditional maritime activity, for barges and similar vessels have traditionally been engaged in repair work similar to what Great Lakes contracted to perform here See, e g, ; (repair of wave suppressor from a barge); In re New York Dock Co, ; In re P Sanford Ross, Inc, rev'd on other grounds, ; cf In re The V-14813, ("There are many cases holding that a dredge, or a barge with |
Justice Souter | 1,995 | 20 | majority | Jerome B. Grubart, Inc. v. Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Co. | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/117900/jerome-b-grubart-inc-v-great-lakes-dredge-dock-co/ | many cases holding that a dredge, or a barge with a pile driver, employed on navigable waters, is subject to maritime jurisdiction 754"); aff'd sub nom Southern Log Cart & Supply The city argues, to the contrary, that a proper application of the activity prong of would consider the city's own alleged failure at properly maintaining and operating the tunnel system that runs under the river City Brief 48-49 If this asserted proximate cause of the flood victims' injuries *541 were considered, the city submits, its failure to resemble any traditional maritime activity would take this suit out of admiralty The city misreads however, which did not consider the activities of the washer/dryer manufacturer, who was possibly an additional tortfeasor, and whose activities were hardly maritime; the activities of the boat owner, supplied the necessary substantial relationship to traditional maritime activity Likewise, in we said that "[b]ecause the `wrong' here involves the negligent operation of a vessel on navigable waters, we believe that it has a sufficient nexus to traditional maritime activity to sustain admiralty jurisdiction " 457 US, By using the word "involves," we made it clear that we need to look only to whether one of the arguably proximate causes of the incident originated in the maritime activity of a tortfeasor: as long as one of the putative tortfeasors was engaged in traditional maritime activity the allegedly wrongful activity will "involve" such traditional maritime activity and will meet the second nexus prong Thus, even if we were to identify the "activity giving rise to the incident" as including the acts of the city as well as Great Lakes, admiralty jurisdiction would nevertheless attach That result would be true to `s requirement of a "substantial relationship" between the "activity giving rise to the incident" and traditional maritime activity did not require, as the city in effect asserts, that there be a complete identity between the two The substantial relationship test is satisfied when at least one alleged tortfeasor was engaging in activity substantially related to traditional maritime activity and such activity is claimed to have been a proximate cause of the incident Petitioners also argue that we might get a different result simply by characterizing the "activity" in question at a different level of generality, perhaps as "repair and maintenance," or as "pile driving near a bridge" The city is, of course, correct that a tortfeasor's activity can be described *542 at a sufficiently high level of generality to eliminate any hint of maritime connection, and if that were properly done would bar assertion of admiralty jurisdiction But to |
Justice Souter | 1,995 | 20 | majority | Jerome B. Grubart, Inc. v. Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Co. | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/117900/jerome-b-grubart-inc-v-great-lakes-dredge-dock-co/ | properly done would bar assertion of admiralty jurisdiction But to suggest that such hypergeneralization ought to be the rule would convert into a vehicle for eliminating admiralty jurisdiction Although there is inevitably some play in the joints in selecting the right level of generality when applying the test, the inevitable imprecision is not an excuse for whimsy The test turns on the comparison of traditional maritime activity to the arguably maritime character of the tortfeasor's activity in a given case; the comparison would merely be frustrated by eliminating the maritime aspect of the tortfeasor's activity from consideration[4] Grubart makes an additional claim that is being given too expansive a reading If the activity at issue here is considered maritime related, it argues, then virtually "every activity involving a vessel on navigable waters" would be "a traditional maritime activity sufficient to invoke maritime jurisdiction" Grubart Brief 6 But this is not fatal criticism This Court has not proposed any radical alteration of the traditional criteria for invoking admiralty jurisdiction in tort cases, but has simply followed the lead of the lower federal courts in rejecting a location rule so rigid as to extend admiralty to a case involving an airplane, not a vessel, engaged in an activity far removed from anything traditionally maritime See Executive 409 U S, 274; see also Peytavin v Government Employees Ins Co, 453 F2d 1121, (CA5 2) ; Chapman v Grosse Pointe Farms, 385 F2d 962 In the cases after Executive the Court stressed the need for a maritime connection, but found one in the navigation or berthing of pleasure boats, despite the facts that the pleasure boat activity took place near shore, where States have a strong interest in applying their own tort law, or was not on all fours with the maritime shipping and commerce that has traditionally made up the business of most maritime courts 497 U S, ; 457 U S, Although we agree with petitioners that these cases do not say that every tort involving a vessel on navigable waters falls within the scope of admiralty jurisdiction no matter what, they do show that ordinarily that will be so[5] III Perhaps recognizing the difficulty of escaping the case law, petitioners ask us to change it In cases "involving land based parties and injuries," the city would have us adopt a condition of jurisdiction that "the totality of the circumstances reflects a federal interest in protecting maritime commerce sufficiently weighty to justify shifting what would otherwise be state-court litigation into federal court under the federal law of admiralty" City Brief 32 *544 |
Justice Souter | 1,995 | 20 | majority | Jerome B. Grubart, Inc. v. Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Co. | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/117900/jerome-b-grubart-inc-v-great-lakes-dredge-dock-co/ | under the federal law of admiralty" City Brief 32 *544 Grubart and the city say that the Fifth Circuit has applied a somewhat similar "four-factor test" looking to "the functions and roles of the parties; the types of vehicles and instrumentalities involved; the causation and the type of injury; and traditional concepts of the role of admiralty law" Kelly v Smith, 485 F2d 520, (CA5 3); see also Molett v Penrod Drilling Co, 826 F2d 1419, cert denied sub nom Columbus-McKinnon, Inc v Gearench, Inc, 493 US 1003 Although they point out that disapproved the use of four-factor or seven-factor tests "where all the relevant entities are engaged in similar types of activity," this rule implicitly left the matter open for cases like this one, where most of the victims, and one of the tortfeasors, are based on land See 497 US, at 365, n 3 The city argues that there is a good reason why cases like this one should get different treatment Since the basic rationale for federal admiralty jurisdiction is "protection of maritime commerce through uniform rules of decision," the proposed jurisdictional test would improve on in limiting the scope of admiralty jurisdiction more exactly to its rationale A multiple factor test would minimize, if not eliminate, the awkward possibility that federal admiralty rules or procedures will govern a case, to the disadvantage of state law, when admiralty's purpose does not require it Cf -686 (Powell, J, dissenting) Although the arguments are not frivolous, they do not persuade It is worth recalling that the tests are aimed at the same objectives invoked to support a new multifactor test, the elimination of admiralty jurisdiction where the rationale *545 for the jurisdiction does not support it If the tort produces no potential threat to maritime commerce or occurs during activity lacking a substantial relationship to traditional maritime activity, assumes that the objectives of admiralty jurisdiction probably do not require its exercise, even if the location test is satisfied If, however, the tests are also satisfied, it is not apparent why the need for admiralty jurisdiction in aid of maritime commerce somehow becomes less acute merely because land-based parties happen to be involved Certainly Congress did not think a land-based party necessarily diluted the need for admiralty jurisdiction or it would have kept its hands off the primitive location test Of course, one could claim it to be odd that under a land-based party (or more than one) may be subject to admiralty jurisdiction, but it would appear no less odd under the city's test that a maritime tortfeasor in |
Justice Souter | 1,995 | 20 | majority | Jerome B. Grubart, Inc. v. Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Co. | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/117900/jerome-b-grubart-inc-v-great-lakes-dredge-dock-co/ | odd under the city's test that a maritime tortfeasor in the most traditional mould might be subject to state common-law jurisdiction Other things being equal, it is not evident why the first supposed anomaly is worse than the second But other things are not even equal As noted just above, Congress has already made the judgment, in the Extension Act, that a land-based victim may properly be subject to admiralty jurisdiction Surely a land-based joint tortfeasor has no claim to supposedly more favorable treatment Nor are these the only objections to the city's position Contrary to what the city suggests, City Brief 10, 14-15, 2526, 30, exercise of federal admiralty jurisdiction does not result in automatic displacement of state law It is true that, "[w]ith admiralty jurisdiction comes the application of substantive admiralty law" East S S Corp v Transamerica Delaval Inc, 476 US 858, But, to characterize that law, as the city apparently does, as "federal rules of decision," City Brief 15, is "a destructive oversimplification of the highly intricate interplay of the States and the National Government in *546 their regulation of maritime commerce It is true that state law must yield to the needs of a uniform federal maritime law when this Court finds inroads on a harmonious system But this limitation still leaves the States a wide scope" Romero v International Terminal Op- erating Co, 358 US 354, See East at -865 ("Drawn from state and federal sources, the general maritime law is an amalgam of traditional common-law rules, modifications of those rules, and newly created rules" ) Thus, the city's proposal to synchronize the jurisdictional enquiry with the test for determining the applicable substantive law would discard a fundamental feature of admiralty law, that federal admiralty courts sometimes do apply state law See, e g, American Dredging Co v Miller, 510 US 443, ; see also 1 S Friedell, Benedict on Admiralty 112, p 7-49 [6] *547 Finally, on top of these objections going to the city's premises there is added a most powerful one based on the practical consequences of adopting a multifactor test Although the existing case law tempers the locality test with the added requirements looking to potential harm and traditional activity, it reflects customary practice in seeing jurisdiction as the norm when the tort originates with a vessel in navigable waters, and in treating departure from the locality principle as the exception For better or worse, the case law has thus carved out the approximate shape of admiralty jurisdiction in a way that admiralty lawyers understand reasonably well As against this |
Justice Souter | 1,995 | 20 | majority | Jerome B. Grubart, Inc. v. Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Co. | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/117900/jerome-b-grubart-inc-v-great-lakes-dredge-dock-co/ | way that admiralty lawyers understand reasonably well As against this approach, so familiar and relatively easy, the proposed four- or seven-factor test would be hard to apply, jettisoning relative predictability for the open-ended roughand-tumble of factors, inviting complex argument in a trial court and a virtually inevitable appeal Consider, for example, just one of the factors under the city's test, requiring a district court at the beginning of every purported admiralty case to determine the source (state or federal) of the applicable substantive law The difficulty of doing that was an important reason why this Court in Romero, was unable to hold that maritime claims fell within the scope of the federal-question-jurisdiction statute, 28 US C 1331 358 US, at 375-376 That concern applies just as strongly to *548 cases invoking a district court's admiralty jurisdiction under 28 US C 1333, under which the jurisdictional enquiry for maritime torts has traditionally been quite uncomplicated Reasons of practice, then, are as weighty as reasons of theory for rejecting the city's call to adopt a multifactor test for admiralty jurisdiction for the benefit of land-based parties to a tort action Accordingly, we conclude that the Court of Appeals correctly held that the District Court had admiralty jurisdiction over the respondent Great Lakes's Limitation Act suit The judgment of the Court of Appeals is Affirmed Justice Stevens and Justice Breyer took no part in the decision of these cases |
Justice O'Connor | 2,001 | 14 | dissenting | Atwater v. Lago Vista | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/2620702/atwater-v-lago-vista/ | The Fourth Amendment guarantees the right to be free from "unreasonable searches and seizures." The Court recognizes that the arrest of Gail Atwater was a "pointless indignity" that served no discernible state interest, ante, at 347, and yet holds that her arrest was constitutionally permissible. Because the Court's position is inconsistent with the explicit guarantee of the Fourth Amendment, I dissent. I A full custodial arrest, such as the one to which Ms. Atwater was subjected, is the quintessential seizure. See When a full custodial arrest is effected without a warrant, the plain language of the Fourth Amendment requires that the arrest be reasonable. See It is beyond cavil that "[t]he touchstone of our analysis under the Fourth Amendment is always `the reasonableness in all the circumstances of the particular governmental invasion of a citizen's personal security.' " ). See also, e. g., United ; ; ; ; United We have "often looked to the common law in evaluating the reasonableness, for Fourth Amendment purposes, of police activity." 4 U.S. 1, (185). But history is just one of the tools we use in conducting the reasonableness inquiry. See at -1; see also 514 U.S. 27, 2 (15); 526 U.S. 25, (1) And when history is inconclusive, as the majority amply demonstrates it is in this case, see ante, at 326-345, we will "evaluate the search or seizure under traditional standards of reasonableness by assessing, on the one hand, the degree to which it intrudes upon an individual's privacy and, on the other, the degree to which it is needed for the promotion of legitimate governmental interests." See also, e. g., 48 U.S. 602, 61 (18); ; (17); at 10. In other words, in determining reasonableness, "[e]ach case is to be decided on its own facts and circumstances." Go-Bart Importing (1). The majority gives a brief nod to this bedrock principle of our Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, and even acknowledges that "Atwater's claim to live free of pointless indignity and confinement clearly outweighs anything the City can raise against it specific to her case." Ante, at 347. But instead of remedying this imbalance, the majority allows itself to be swayed by the worry that "every discretionary judgment in the field [will] be converted into an occasion for constitutional review." It therefore mints a new rule that "[i]f an officer has probable cause to believe that an individual *362 has committed even a very minor criminal offense in his presence, he may, without violating the Fourth Amendment, arrest the offender." Ante, at 354. This rule is not only unsupported by our precedent, but |
Justice O'Connor | 2,001 | 14 | dissenting | Atwater v. Lago Vista | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/2620702/atwater-v-lago-vista/ | This rule is not only unsupported by our precedent, but runs contrary to the principles that lie at the core of the Fourth Amendment. As the majority tacitly acknowledges, we have never considered the precise question presented here, namely, the constitutionality of a warrantless arrest for an offense punishable only by fine. Cf. Indeed, on the rare occasions that Members of this Court have contemplated such an arrest, they have indicated disapproval. See, e. g., (173) ("[A] persuasive claim might have been made that the custodial arrest of the petitioner for a minor traffic offense violated his rights under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. But no such claim has been made"); United (173) (the validity of a custodial arrest for a minor traffic offense is not "self-evident"). To be sure, we have held that the existence of probable cause is a necessary condition for an arrest. See 2-214 (17). And in the case of felonies punishable by a term of imprisonment, we have held that the existence of probable cause is also a sufficient condition for an arrest. See United 423 U.S. (176). In Watson, however, there was a clear and consistently applied common law rule permitting warrantless felony arrests. See Accordingly, our inquiry ended there and we had no need to assess the reasonableness of such arrests by weighing individual liberty interests against state interests. Cf. at 2-300; (criticizing majority for disregarding undisputed common law rule). Here, however, we have no such luxury. The Court's thorough exegesis makes it abundantly clear that warrantless *363 misdemeanor arrests were not the subject of a clear and consistently applied rule at common law. See, e. g., ante, at 332 (finding "disagreement, not unanimity, among both the common-law jurists and the text writers"); ante, at 335 (acknowledging that certain early English statutes serve only to "riddle Atwater's supposed common-law rule with enough exceptions to unsettle any contention [that there was a clear common-law rule barring warrantless arrests for misdemeanors that were not breaches of the peace]"). We therefore must engage in the balancing test required by the Fourth Amendment. See at 2-300. While probable cause is surely a necessary condition for warrantless arrests for fine-only offenses, see at 2-214, any realistic assessment of the interests implicated by such arrests demonstrates that probable cause alone is not a sufficient condition. See infra, at 364-366. Our decision in is not to the contrary. The specific question presented there was whether, in evaluating the Fourth Amendment reasonableness of a traffic stop, the subjective intent of the police officer is a relevant consideration. 08, 814. We held |
Justice O'Connor | 2,001 | 14 | dissenting | Atwater v. Lago Vista | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/2620702/atwater-v-lago-vista/ | police officer is a relevant consideration. 08, 814. We held that it is not, and stated that "[t]he making of a traffic stop is governed by the usual rule that probable cause to believe the law has been broken `outbalances' private interest in avoiding police contact." 18. We of course did not have occasion in Whren to consider the constitutional preconditions for warrantless arrests for fine-only offenses. Nor should our words be taken beyond their context. There are significant qualitative differences between a traffic stop and a full custodial arrest. While both are seizures that fall within the ambit of the Fourth Amendment, the latter entails a much greater intrusion on an individual's liberty and privacy interests. As we have said, "[a] motorist's expectations, when he sees a policeman's light flashing behind him, are that he will be obliged to spend *364 a short period of time answering questions and waiting while the officer checks his license and registration, that he may be given a citation, but that in the end he most likely will be allowed to continue on his way." (184). Thus, when there is probable cause to believe that a person has violated a minor traffic law, there can be little question that the state interest in law enforcement will justify the relatively limited intrusion of a traffic stop. It is by no means certain, however, that where the offense is punishable only by fine, "probable cause to believe the law has been broken [will] `outbalanc[e]' private interest in avoiding" a full custodial arrest. 18. Justifying a full arrest by the same quantum of evidence that justifies a traffic stopeven though the offender cannot ultimately be imprisoned for her conductdefies any sense of proportionality and is in serious tension with the Fourth Amendment's proscription of unreasonable seizures. A custodial arrest exacts an obvious toll on an individual's liberty and privacy, even when the period of custody is relatively brief. The arrestee is subject to a full search of her person and confiscation of her possessions. United If the arrestee is the occupant of a car, the entire passenger compartment of the car, including packages therein, is subject to search as well. See New v. (181). The arrestee may be detained for up to 48 hours without having a magistrate determine whether there in fact was probable cause for the arrest. See County of Because people arrested for all types of violent and nonviolent offenses may be housed together awaiting such review, this detention period is potentially dangerous. Rosazza & Cook, Jail Intake: Managing A Critical FunctionPart One: |
Justice O'Connor | 2,001 | 14 | dissenting | Atwater v. Lago Vista | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/2620702/atwater-v-lago-vista/ | Rosazza & Cook, Jail Intake: Managing A Critical FunctionPart One: Resources, American Jails 35 (Mar./Apr. 1). And once the period of custody is over, the fact of the arrest is a permanent *365 part of the public record. Cf. 424 U.S. 63 (176). We have said that "the penalty that may attach to any particular offense seems to provide the clearest and most consistent indication of the State's interest in arresting individuals suspected of committing that offense." (184). If the State has decided that a fine, and not imprisonment, is the appropriate punishment for an offense, the State's interest in taking a person suspected of committing that offense into custody is surely limited, at best. This is not to say that the State will never have such an interest. A full custodial arrest may on occasion vindicate legitimate state interests, even if the crime is punishable only by fine. Arrest is the surest way to abate criminal conduct. It may also allow the police to verify the offender's identity and, if the offender poses a flight risk, to ensure her appearance at trial. But when such considerations are not present, a citation or summons may serve the State's remaining law enforcement interests every bit as effectively as an arrest. Cf. Lodging for State of Texas et al. as Amici Curiae (Texas Department of Public Safety, Student Handout, Traffic Law Enforcement 1 (1)) ("Citations. Definitiona means of getting violators to court without physical arrest. A citation should be used when it will serve this purpose except when by issuing a citation and releasing the violator, the safety of the public and/or the violator might be imperiled as in the case of D. W. I."). Because a full custodial arrest is such a severe intrusion on an individual's liberty, its reasonableness hinges on "the degree to which it is needed for the promotion of legitimate governmental interests." 526 U. S., In light of the availability of citations to promote a State's interests when a fine-only offense has been committed, I cannot concur in a rule which deems a full custodial arrest to be reasonable in every circumstance. Giving police *366 officers constitutional carte blanche to effect an arrest whenever there is probable cause to believe a fine-only misdemeanor has been committed is irreconcilable with the Fourth Amendment's command that seizures be reasonable. Instead, I would require that when there is probable cause to believe that a fine-only offense has been committed, the police officer should issue a citation unless the officer is "able to point to specific and articulable facts which, taken |
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