United States v. Carmack/Opinion of the Court

This proceeding was instituted by the United States to condemn land as a site for a post office and customhouse in the City of Cape Girardeau, Missouri, in reliance upon several federal statutes, including the general Condemnation Act of August 1, 1888, and the Public Buildings Act of May 25, 1926. The City and site were selected by the Federal Works Administrator and the Postmaster General acting jointly under the Public Buildings Act. The principal issue is: Was the Federal Works Administrator authorized by the foregoing statutes to acquire by condemnation land held in trust and used by the City for such public purposes as those of a local park, courthouse, city hall and public library?

In 1941, the United States petitioned the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri to condemn as a site for a United States post office and customhouse about one and one-half acres, near the center of the City of Cape Girardeau, together with the improvements thereon except a public library building. This site was part of a four acre public park and the improvements to be condemned included a building used as the county courthouse and city hall, a memorial fountain, a small memorial monument and a portion of a bandstand. The library building apparently was to be removed by its owners on 30 days' notice from the United States.

The petition included as parties defendant the City and County, numerous officials and all known and unknown heirs or others who might claim an interest in this site especially through those who conveyed it, in trust, in 1807 to the Commissioners of the District or, in trust, in 1820 to the inhabitants of the Town of Cape Girardeau. Respondent was the only defendant to file an answer. Finding that she had no interest permitting her to maintain the defenses she asserted, the District Court entered a preliminary decree in favor of the United States. On respondent's appeal the Circuit Court of Appeals remanded the cause for further proceedings consistent with its opinion holding that the respondent had a special interest entitling her to object to the property being taken for a purpose destructive of the public use to which it had been dedicated by her ancestors. Carmack v. United States, 8 Cir., 135 F.2d 196.

In 1944, on retrial before a different judge, the District Court recognized the respondent as entitled to contest the condemnation and, at the direction of the Circuit Court of Appeals, heard evidence as to whether or not the officials of the United States acted capriciously and arbitrarily in selecting this site. It held that 'the selection of the site described in the petition, under all the facts re erred to, amounts in law to an arbitrary and unnecessary act' and dismissed the petition. United States v. Certain Land Situate in City of Cape Girardeau, Mo., D.C., 55 F.Supp. 555, 564. The Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment on the ground that the Federal Works Administrator and the Postmaster General did not have sufficient statutory authority 'to take the particular land sought to be condemned.' It then expressly found it unnecessary to consider whether or not the federal officials had acted 'capriciously or arbitrarily.' United States v. Carmack, 151 F.2d 881, 882. Because of the importance of the construction of the statutes authorizing the condemnation of land for federal uses, we granted certiorari. 327 U.S. 775, 66 S.Ct. 959.

Both the general Condemnation Act and the Public Buildings Act expressly authorized the acquisition of land by the United States by condemnation as a site for a United States post office, customhouse or courthouse. Neither Act expressly named the City or designated the site to be condemned in this case. Neither expressly stated whether or not sites already in use for conflicting federal, state or local public purposes were subject to condemnation. The Condemnation Act supplemented the federal right 'to procure real estate for the erection of a public building or for other public uses,' by adding to it a general federal power of condemnation under judicial process to be exercised by an officer of the Government 'whenever in his opinion it is necessary or advantageous to the Government to do so.' The Public Buildings Act, as an incident to an original $150,000,000 program, gave authority and direction to the Secretary of the Treasury (later substituting the Federal Works Administrator) 'to acquire by purchase, condemnation, or otherwise, such sites * *  * as he may deem necessary, *  *  * .' It specified that as to 'buildings to be used in whole or in part for postoffice purposes, the Federal Works Administrator, under regulations to be prescribed by him, shall act jointly with the Postmaster General in the selection of towns or cities in which buildings are to be constructed and the selection of sites therein: *  *  * .' These Acts were natural means for Congress to adopt in putting its constitutional powers into use on a scale commensurate with the size of the nation and the need of the time. Neither Act imposed expressly any limitations upon the authority of the officials designated by Congress to exercise its power of condemnation in procuring sites for public buildings deemed necessary by such officials to enable the Government to perform certain specified functions. Far removed from the time and circumstances that led to the enactment of these statutes in 1888 and 1926, this Court must be slow to read into them today unexpressed limitations restricting the authority of the very officials named in the Acts as the ones upon whom Congress chose to rely.

The power of eminent domain is essential to a sovereign government. If the United States has determined its need for certain land for a public use that is within its federal sovereign powers, it must have the right to appropriate that land. Otherwise, the owner of the land, by refusing to sell it or by consenting to do so only at an unreasonably high price, is enabled to subordinate the constitutional powers of Congress to his personal will. The Fifth Amendment, in turn, provides him with important protection against abuse of the power of eminent domain by the Federal Government.

While in its early days the Federal Government filed its condemnation cases in the State courts, this Court, in Kohl v. United States, 91 U.S. 367, 23 L.Ed. 449, disposed of the idea that this was necessary. In that case, which has become the leading case on the federal power of eminent domain, Mr. Justice Strong also said:

'It has not been seriously contended during the argument that the United States government is without power to appropriate lands or other property within the States for its own uses, and to enable it to perform its proper functions. Such an authority is essential to its independent existence and perpetuity. These cannot be preserved if the obstinacy of a private person, or if any other authority, can prevent the acquisition of the means or instruments by which alone governmental functions can be performed. The powers vested by the Constitution in the general government demand for their exercise the acquisition of lands in all the States. These are needed for forts, armories, and arsenals, for navy-yards and light-houses for custom-houses, post-offices, and court-houses, and for other public uses. If the right to acquire property for such uses may be made a barren right by the unwillingness of property-holders to sell, or by the action of a State prohibiting a sale to the Federal government, the constitutional grants of power may be rendered nugatory, and the government is dependent for its practical existence upon the will of a State, or even upon that of a private citizen. This cannot be. No one doubts the existence in the State governments of the right of eminent domain,-a right distinct from and paramount to the right of ultimate ownership. It grows out of the necessities of their being, not out of the tenure by which lands are held. It may be exercised, though the lands are not held by grant from the government, either mediately or immediately, and independent of the consideration whether they would escheat to the government in case of a failure of heirs. The right is the offspring of political necessity; and it is inseparable from sovereignty, unless denied to it by its fundamental law. * *  * But it is no more necessary for the exercise of the powers of a State government than it is for the exercise of the conceded powers of the Federal government. That government is as sovereign within its sphere as the States are within theirs. True, its sphere is limited. Certain subjects only are committed to it; but its power over those subjects is as full and complete as is the power of the States over the subjects to which their sovereignty extends.

'If the United States have the power, it must be complete in itself. It can neither be enlarged nor diminished by a State. Nor can any State prescribe the manner in which it must be exercised. The consent of a State can never be a condition precedent to its enjoyment.' (Italics supplied.) Kohl v. United States, supra, 91 U.S. 371, 372, 374, 23 L.Ed. 449.

The Kohl case approved the condemnation of privately owned land, then subject to a perpetual leasehold, for a post office site in Cincinnati, Ohio, under an Act of Congress expressly naming that City but not expressly naming the site. The respondent here seeks, by judicial interpretation of the general Condemnation Act and the Public Buildings Act, to exclude from condemnation a particular site in Cape Girardeau selected for a post office by the appropriate federal officials. She depends upon the fact that the site already is being used by a governmental subdivision of Missouri for other public purposes impressed upon it by its private owners over a century ago. The principle of federal supremacy, so well expressed in the Kohl case, argues against such a subordination of the decisions of federal representatives to those of individual grantors or local officials as to the means of carrying out an admittedly federal governmental function.

It makes little difference that the site here sought to be condemned is held by the City in trust instead of in fee. The city government is not resisting the condemnation. The Federal Government can obtain, by voluntary conveyance, whatever title the City can convey. The weakness in the City's right to sell or exchange this site arises from restrictions in the conveyance to it. Through the inclusion, as defendants, of all claimants who might rely upon such restrictions or might claim an interest through the grantors of this site, a decree of condemnation will dispose of the suggested defects. By giving notice to all claimants to a disputed title, condemnation proceedings provide a judicial process for securing better title against all the world than may be obtained by voluntary conveyance.

Both in themselves and from the relation of these Acts to the Constitution, we find substantial reason for making their broad language effective to its full constitutional limit. While the federal power of eminent domain is limited to taking property for federal public uses, the question of the existence of a federal public use presents no difficulty here because the constitutional power of Congress to establish post offices is express.

The considerations that made it appropriate for the Constitution to declare that the Constitution of the United States, and the laws of the United States made in pursuance thereof, shall be the supreme law of the land make it appropriate to recognize that the power of eminent domain, when exercised by Congress within its constitutional powers, be equally supreme. Mr. Justice Bradley stated this principle clearly, while on circuit, in Stockton v. Baltimore & N.Y.R. Co., C.C., 32 F. 9, 19: 'The argument based upon the doctrine that the states have the eminent domain or highest dominion in the lands comprised within their limits, and that the United States have no dominion in such lands, cannot avail to frustrate the supremacy given by the constitution to the government of the United States in all matters within the scope of its sovereignty. This is not a matter of words, but of things. If it is necessary that the United States government should have an eminent domain still higher than that of the state, in order that it may fully carry out the objects and purposes of the constitution, then it has it. Whatever may be the necessities or conclusions of theoretical law as to eminent domain or anything else, it must be received as a postulate of the constitution that the government of the United States is invested with full and complete power to execute and carry out its purposes.'

The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution says 'nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.' This is a tacit recognition of a preexisting power to take private property for public use, rather than a grant of new power. It imposes on the Federal Government the obligation to pay just compensation when it takes another's property for public use in accordance with the federal sovereign power to appropriate it. Accordingly, when the Federal Government thus takes for a federal public use the independently held and controlled property of a state or of a local subdivision, the Federal Government recognizes its obligation to pay just compensation for it and it is conceded in this ca e that the Federal Government must pay must compensation for the land condemned.

The foregoing establishes the principle of the supremacy of a federal public use over all other uses in a clearly designated field such as that of establishing post offices. The Government here contends that the officials designated by Congress have been authorized by Congress to use their best judgment in selecting post office sites. It contends also that if the officials so designated have used such judgment, in good faith, in selecting the proposed park site in spite of its conflicting local public uses, the Federal Works Administrator has express authority to direct the condemnation of that site. We agree with those contentions. We find in the broad terms of the Public Buildings Act authority for the designated officials to select the site they did. We find, in both Acts, authority for them to acquire by condemnation the site thus lawfully selected. The judgment exercised by the designated officials in selecting this site out of 22 sites suggested, and out of two closely balanced alternatives, constituted an administrative and legislative decision not subject to judicial review on its merits. It was within the legislative power of Congress to choose or reject this site by direct action. It would have been within its legislative power to exclude from the consideration of its representatives this or other sites, the selection of which might interfere with local governmental functions. Such an exclusion would have been an act of legislative policy. We find no such express or necessarily implied exclusion in the broad language of these Acts.

In this case, it is unnecessary to determine whether or not this selection could have been set aside by the courts as unauthorized by Congress if the designated officials had acted in bad faith or so 'capriciously and arbitrarily' that their action was without adequate determining principle or was unreasoned. The record presents no such issue here. The procedure followed in making the selection of the site showed extraordinary effort to arrive at a fair and reasoned conclusion. The site inspector, in his original report, recommended the park site as his second choice and demonstrated the reasonableness of a choice, by his superiors, of either of his first two selections. His estimate of divided community sentiment, with apparent community preference for the park site, indicates the absence of capriciousness and arbitrariness in the Government's final selection of the park site. The popular referendum vote of 1612 to 1344 in favor of the transfer of the park site by the City to the Federal Government, in exchange for the Government's transfer of its present post office site to the City, confirms his estimate. These federal officials had the right, if not the obligation, to consider at this time the necessity of disposing of the present post office site and of the single purpose governmental building thereon. That issue inevitably would confront the Government at some time if a new site were chosen. The opportunity to exchange or sell the present site to the City in connection with the acquisition of the park site for a new post office was, therefore, a reasonable rather than a capricious consideration.

On the present record, the petitioner was entitled to a preliminary judgment of condemnation. The finding of the District Court on the second trial that the selection of the park site 'amounts in law to an arbitrary and unnecessary act' appears, from the context, to have been a finding largely of the comparative undesirability and lack of necessity for the selection of that site and not to have been a finding that the selection had been made without adequate determining principle and without reason. The comparative desirability and necessity for the site were matters for legislative or administrative determination rather than for a judicial finding. Even if the word 'arbitrary', as used by the District Court, was intended by it to have the ordinary meaning which that word has when used alone, we are unable to conclude on the record before us that the selection of the park site for a post office in Cape Girardeau, was, as a matter of law, capricious and arbitrary in any sense that, under any construction of the Acts before us, would invalidate the selection here made.

The judgment of the Circuit Court of Appeals, therefore, is reversed and the cause remanded to the District Court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

Reversed.

Mr. Justice DOUGLAS concurs in the result and substantially agrees with the opinion of the Court. But he reserves judgment as to the circumstances under which authority to condemn land owned by a city or a state should be inferred from a general condemnation statute, if the local government challenged the taking.