Canada Packers Limited v. Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway Company/Dissent Douglas

Mr. Justice DOUGLAS, dissenting.

An Act of Congress gives the Interstate Commerce Commission jurisdiction over transportation from or to any place in the United States to or from a foreign country 'but only insofar as such transportation * *  * takes place within the United States.' 24 Stat. 379, as amended, 49 U.S.C. § 1(1). How that can be read, 'Whether or not such transportation * *  * takes place within the United States' remains a mystery. News Syndicate Co. v. New York Central R. Co., 275 U.S. 179, 48 S.Ct. 39, 72 L.Ed. 225, and Lewis-Simas-Jones Co. v. Southern Pacific Co., 283 U.S. 654, 51 S.Ct. 592, 75 L.Ed. 1333, actually decided something less.

In News Syndicate there was a through rate from a point in Canada to New York City; but the carrier had failed to establish a rate from the international boundary to New York City. The Court refused to let the jurisdiction of the Commission be defeated in that way and allowed it to determine the reasonableness of the through rate. 275 U.S., at 187, 48 S.Ct., at 40. In the Lewis-Simas-Jones case the Court also emphasized that no tariff applicable 'to the American part of the transportation of an international shipment on a through bill of lading' had been established 'as required by the Act.' 283 U.S., at 663, 51 S.Ct., at 596. Those cases were explained in Great Northern R. Co. v. Sullivan, 294 U.S. 458, 462, 55 S.Ct. 472, 474, 79 L.Ed. 992.

'In each, shipments moved from an adjacent country into the     United States on through rates made by joint action of the      participating foreign and American carriers. The American     carrier, having violated the Act by failure to file any      tariff to cover its part of the transportation, collected      freight charges found to be excessive and, as one of two or      more joint tortfeasors, was held liable to the extent that      the charges it exacted were in excess of what the commission      ascertained to be just and reasonable. But here the charges     collected were not excessive, and confessedly the same      amounts lawfully might have been collected without injury or      damage to plaintiff if only the connecting carriers had      imposed the charges by means of 'joint' instead of the      'combination' through rates that they did establish.'

In the present case rates from Carlsbad and Loving, New Mexico, to the Canadian border points had been established. 300 I.C.C. 87. The issues presented in News Syndicate and Lewis-Simas-Jones are therefore not offered here. Stare decisis is an important principle in dealing with statutory law, though even so we have not always placed 'on the shoulders of Congress the burden of the Court's own error.' Girouard v. United States, 328 U.S. 61, 70, 66 S.Ct. 826, 830, 90 L.Ed. 1084. As we said in Toucey v. New York Life Ins. Co., 314 U.S. 118, 140-141, 62 S.Ct. 139, 147, 86 L.Ed. 100:

'There is no occasion here to regard the silence of Congress     as more commanding than its own plainly and unmistakably spoken words. This is not a situation where     Congress has failed to act after having been requested to act      or where the circumstances are such that Congress would      ordinarily be expected to act. * *  * To find significance in      Congressional non-action under these circumstances is to find      significance where there is none.'

And see Helvering v. Hallock, 309 U.S. 106, 119-122, 60 S.Ct. 444, 451-453, 84 L.Ed. 604. Compare Mabee v. White Plains Publishing Co., 327 U.S. 178, 185, 66 S.Ct. 511, 514, 90 L.Ed. 607. Nor do we have here a precedent 'around which, by the accretion of time and the response of affairs, substantial interests have established themselves.' Helvering v. Hallock, supra, 309 U.S. at 119, 60 S.Ct., at 451.

Moreover, we need not be slaves to a precedent by treating it as standing for more than it actually decided nor by subtly eroding it in sophisticated ways. See Radin, The Trail of the Calf, 32 Cornell L.Q. 137, 143 (1946). It is enough that we do not approve 'of the doctrinal generalization which the previous court used' (ibid.) and confine the precedent to what it actually decided. Certainly we should not extend the range of a precedent beyond its generating reason especially when another policy, here the plain words of an Act of Congress, will be impaired by doing so.

I would affirm this judgment.