United States v. Raines/Concurrence Frankfurter

Mr. Justice FRANKFURTER, with whom Mr. Justice HARLAN concurs, joining in the judgment.

The weighty presumptive validity with which the Civil Rights Act of 1957, like every enactment of Congress, comes here is not overborne by any claim urged against it. To deal with legislation so as to find unconstitutionality is to reverse the duty of courts to apply a statute so as to save it. Here this measure is sustained under familiar principles of constitutional law. Nor is there any procedural hurdle left to be cleared to sustain the suit of the United States. Whatever may have been the original force of Barney v. City of New York, 193 U.S. 430, 24 S.Ct. 502, 48 L.Ed. 737, that decision has long ceased to be an obstruction, nor is any other decision in the way of our result in this case. And so I find it needless to canvass the multitude of opinions that may generally touch on, but do not govern, the issues now before us.