United States v. United Mine Workers of America/Concurrence Frankfurter

Mr. Justice FRANKFURTER, concurring in the judgment.

The historic phrase 'a government of laws and not of men' epitomized the distinguishing character of our political society. When John Adams put that phrase into the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights, pt. 1, art. 30, he was not indulging in a rhetorical flourish. He was expressing the aim of those who, with him, framed the Declaration of Independence and founded the Republic. 'A government of laws and not of men' was the rejection in positive terms of rule by fiat, whether by the fiat of governmental or private power. Every act of government may be challenged by an appeal to law, as finally pronounced by this Court. Even this Court has the last say only for a time. Being composed of fallible men, it may err. But revision of its errors must be by orderly process of law. The Court may be asked to reconsider its decisions, and this has been done successfully again and again throughout our history. Or, what this Court has deemed its duty to decide may be changed by legislation, as it often has been, and, on occasion, by constitutional amendment.

But from their own experience and their deep reading in history, the Founders knew that Law alone saves a society from being rent by internecine strife or ruled by mere brute power however disguised. 'Civilization involves subjection of force to reason, and the agency of this subjection is law.' The conception of a government by laws dominated the thoughts of those who founded this Nation and designed its Constitution, although they knew as well as the belittlers of the conception that laws have to be made, interpreted and enforced by men. To that end, they set apart a body of men, who were to be the depositories of law, who by their disciplined training and character and by withdrawal from the usual temptations of private interest may reasonably be expected to be 'as free, impartial, and independent as the lot of humanity will admit'. So strongly were the framers of the Constitution bent on securing a reign of law that they endowed the judicial office with extraordinary safeguards and prestige. No one, no matter how exalted his public office or how righteous his private motive, can be judge in his own case. That is what courts are for. And no type of controversy is more peculiarly fit for judicial determination than a controversy that calls into question the power of a court to decide. Controversies over 'jurisdiction' are apt to raise difficult technical problems. They usually involve judicial presuppositions, textual doubts, confused legislative history, and like factors hardly fit for final determination by the self-interest of a party.

Even when a statute deals with a relatively uncomplicated matter, and the 'words in their natural sense as they would be read by the common man' would appear to give an obvious meaning, considerations underlying the statute have led this Court to conclude that 'the words cannot be taken quite so simply.' See Alexander Milburn Co. v. Davis-Bournonville Co., 270 U.S. 390, 400, 46 S.Ct. 324, 70 L.Ed. 651. How much more true this is of legislation like the Norris-LaGuardia Act. This Act altered a long process of judicial history, but altered it by a scheme of complicated definitions and limitations.

The Government here invoked the aid of a court of equity in circumstances which certainly were not covered by the Act with inescapable clarity. Colloquially speaking, the Government was 'running' the mines. But it was 'running' them not as an employer, in the sense that the owners of the coal mines were the employers of the men the day before the Government seized the mines. Nor yet was the relation between the Government and the men like the relation of the Government to the civil service employees in the Department of the Interior. It would be naive or wilful to assert that the scope of the Norris-LaGuardia Act in a situation like that presented by this bill raised a question so frivolous that any judge should have summarily thrown the Government out of court without day. Only when a court is so obviously traveling outside its orbit as to be merely usurping judicial forms and facilities, may an order issued by a court be disobeyed and treated as though it were a letter to a newspaper. Short of an indisputable want of authority on the part of a court, the very existence of a court presupposes its power to entertain a controversy, if only to decide, after deliberation, that it has no power over the particular controversy. Whether a defendant may be brought to the bar of justice is not for the defendant himself to decide.

To be sure, an obvious limitation upon a court cannot be circumvented by a frivolous inquiry into the existence of a power that has unquestionably been withheld. Thus, the explicit withdrawal from federal district courts of the power to issue injunctions in an ordinary labor dispute between a private employer and his employees cannot be defeated, and an existing right to strike thereby impaired, by pretending to entertain a suit for such an injunction in order to decide whether the court has jurisdiction. In such a case, a judge would not be acting as a court. He would be a pretender to, not a wielder of, judicial power.

That is not this case. It required extended arguments, lengthy briefs, study and reflection preliminary to adequate discussion in conference, before final conclusions could be reached regarding the proper interpretation of the legislation controlling this case. A majority of my brethren find that neither the Norris-LaGuardia Act nor the War Labor Disputes Act limited the power of the district court to issue the orders under review. I have come to the contrary view. But to suggest that the right to de ermine so complicated and novel an issue could not be brought within the cognizance of the district court, and eventually of this Court, is to deny the place of the judiciary in our scheme of government. And if the district court had power to decide whether this case was properly before it, it could make appropriate orders so as to afford the necessary time for fair consideration and decision while existing conditions were preserved. To say that the authority of the court may be flouted during the time necessary to decide is to reject the requirements of the judicial process.

It does not mitigate such defiance of law to urge that hard-won liberties of collective action by workers were at stake. The most prized liberties themselves pre-suppose an independent judiciary through which these liberties may be, as they often have been, vindicated. When in a real controversy, such as is now here, an appeal is made to law, the issue must be left to the judgment of courts and not the personal judgment of one of the parties. This principle is a postulate of our democracy.

And so I join the opinion of the Court insofar as it sustains the judgment for criminal contempt upon the broad ground of vindicating the process of law. The records of this Court are full of cases, both civil and criminal, involving life or land or small sums of money, in which the Court proceeded to consider a federal claim that was not obviously frivolous. It retained such cases under its power until final judgment, though the claim eventually turned out to be unfounded and the judgment was one denying the jurisdiction either of this Court or of the court from which the case came. In the case before us, the District Court had power 'to preserve the existing conditions' in the discharge of 'its duty to permit argument, and to take the time required for such consideration as it might need' to decide whether the controversy involved a labor dispute to which the Norris-LaGuardia Act applied. United States v. Shipp, 203 U.S. 563, 573, 27 S.Ct. 165, 166, 51 L.Ed. 319, 8 Ann.Cas. 265 and Howat v. State of Kansas, 258 U.S. 181, 42 S.Ct. 277, 66 L.Ed. 550.

In our country law is not a body of technicalities in the keeping of specialists or in the service of any special interest. There can be no free society without law administered through an independent judiciary. If one man can be allowed to determine for himself what is law, every man can. That means first chaos, then tyranny. Legal process is an essential part of the democratic process. For legal process is subject to democratic control by defined, orderly ways which themselves are part of law. In a democracy, power implies responsibility. The greater the power that defies law the less tolerant can this Court be of defiance. As the Nation's ultimate judicial tribunal, this Court, beyond any other organ of society, is the trustee of law and charged with the duty of securing obedience to it.

It only remains to state the basis of my disagreement with the Court's views on the bearing of the Norris-LaGuardia Act, 47 Stat. 70, 29 U.S.C. § 101, 29 U.S.C.A. § 101, and the War Labor Disputes Act, 57 Stat. 163, 50 U.S.C.App. § 1501, 50 U.S.C.A. Appendix, § 1501. As to the former, the Court relies essentially on a general doctrine excluding the Government from the operation of a statute in which it is not named, and on the legislative history of the Act. I find the countervailing considerations weightier. The Norris-LaGuardia Act deprived the federal courts of jurisdiction to issue injunctions in labor disputes except under conditions not here relevant. The question before a court of equity therefore is whether a case presents a labor dispute as efined by the Act. Section 13(c) defines 'labor disputes':

'The term 'labor dispute' includes any controversy concerning terms or conditions of employment * *  * regardless of whether or not the disputants stand in the proximate relation of employer and employee.'

That the controversy before the district court comes within this definition does not need to be labored. The controversy arising under the Lewis-Krug contract concerned 'terms or conditions of employment' and was therefore a 'labor dispute', whatever further radiations the dispute may have had. The Court deems it appropriate to interpolate an exception regarding labor disputes to which the Government is a party. It invokes a canon of construction according to which the Government is excluded from the operation of general statutes unless it is included by explicit language.

The Norris-LaGuardia Act has specific origins and definite purposes and should not be confined by an artifical canon of construction. The title of the Act gives its scope and purpose, and the terms of the Act justify its title. It is an Act 'to define and limit the jurisdiction of courts sitting in equity'. It does not deal with the rights of parties but with the power of the courts. Again and again the statute says 'no court * *  * shall have jurisdiction', or an equivalent phrase. Congress was concerned with the withdrawal of power from the federal courts to issue injunctions in a defined class of cases. Nothing in the Act remotely hints that the withdrawal of this power turns on the character of the parties. The only reference to parties underscores their irrelevance to the issue of jurisdiction, for the power of the courts is withdrawn in a labor dispute 'regardless of whether or not the disputants stand in the proximate relation of employer and employee'. The limitation on the jurisdiction of the court depends entirely on the subject matter of the controversy. Section 13(a) defines it:

'A case shall be held to involve or to grow out of a labor dispute when the case involves persons who are engaged in the same industry, trade, craft, or occupation; or have direct or indirect interests therein; or who are employees of the same employer; or who are members of the same or an affiliated organization of employers or employees; * *  * .' Neither the context nor the content of the Act qualifies the terms of that section. Did not the suit brought by the Government against Lewis and the United Mine Workers 'grow out of a labor dispute' within the terms of § 13(a)?

As already indicated, the Court now finds an exception to the limitation which the Norris-LaGuardia Act placed upon the equity jurisdiction of the district court, not in the Act but outside it. It invokes a canon of construction that a sovereign is presumptively not intended to be bound by its own statute unless named in it. At best, this canon, like other generalities about statutory construction, is not a rule of law. Whatever persuasiveness it may have in construing a particular statute derives from the subject matter and the terms of the enactment in its total environment. 'This rule has its historical basis in the English doctrine that the Crown is unaffected by acts of Parliament not specifically directed against it. * *  * The presumption is an aid to consistent construction of statutes of the enacting sovereign when their purpose is in doubt, but it does not require that the aim of a statute fairly to be inferred be disregarded because not explicitly stated.' So wrote the late Chief Justice for the whole Court in United States v. State of California, 297 U.S. 175, 186, 56 S.Ct. 421, 425, 80 L.Ed. 567, and this point of view was very recently applied in United States v. Rice, 327 U.S. 742, 749, 66 S.Ct. 835, 837. It is one thing to read a statute so as not to bind the sovereign by restrictions, or to impose upon it duties, which are applicable to ordinary citizens. It is quite another to interpolate into a statute limiting the jurisdiction of a cou t, the qualification that such limitation does not apply when the Government invokes the jurisdiction. No decision of this Court gives countenance to such a doctrine of interpolation. The text, context, content and historical setting of the Norris-LaGuardia Act all converge to indicate the unrestricted withdrawal by Congress from the federal district courts of the power to issue injunctions in labor disputes, excepting only under circumstances explicitly defined and not here present. The meaning which a reading of the text conveys and which is confirmed by the history which led Congress to free the federal courts from entanglements in these industrial controversies through use of the injunction, ought not to be subordinated to an abstract canon of construction that carries the residual flavor of the days when a personal sovereign was the law-maker.

Moreover, the rule proves too much. If the United States must explicitly be named to be affected, the limitations imposed by the Norris-LaGuardia Act upon the district court's jurisdiction could not deprive the United States of the remedies it therefore had. Accordingly, the courts would not be limited in their jurisdiction when the United States is a party and the Act would not apply in any proceeding in which the United States is complainant. It would mean that, in order to protect the public interest, which may be jeopardized just as much whether an essential industry continued under private control or has been temporarily seized by the Government, a court could, at the behest of the Attorney General of the United States, issue an injunction as courts did when they issued the Debs, the Hayes and the Railway Shopmen's injunctions. But it was these very injunctions, secured by the Attorney General of the United States under claim of compelling public emergency, that gave the most powerful momentum to the enactment of the Norris-LaGuardia Act. This history is too familiar to be rehearsed. It is surely surprising to conclude that when a long and persistent effort to take the federal courts out of the industrial conflict, insofar as the labor injunction put them into it, found its way to the statute books, the Act failed to meet the grievances that were most dramatic and deepest in the memory of those most concerned with the legislation.

It is urged, however, that legislative history cuts down what might otherwise be the scope of the Act. Reliance is placed on statements by two Representatives during the House debates on the Bill, calculated to show that Congress purposed to exclude from the limitation of the jurisdiction of the district courts labor disputes involving 'employees' of the Government, at least where injunctions are sought by the Attorney General. Since both statements came from spokesmen for the Bill, they carry weight. The nature of these remarks, the circumstances under which they were delivered, as well as their setting, define their meaning and the significance to be given them as a gloss upon the Act.

There was before the House an Amendment by Representative Blanton which would have made the Act applicable 'except where the United States Government is the petitioner.' (75 Cong.Rec. 5503.) Representative LaGuardia opposed the Amendment, remarking 'I do not see how in any possible way the United States can be brought in under the provisions of this bill.' If this is to be read apart from the meaning afforded by the context of the debates and the whole course of the legislation, it would mean that the jurisdiction to grant a Debs injunction continued unaffected. No one would have been more startled by such a conclusion that Mr. LaGuardia. The fact is that a situation like the present, where the Government for a time has ome relation to a labor dispute in an essentially private industry, was evidently not in the thought of Congress. Certainly it was not discussed. Mr. LaGuardia's statement regarding the position of the United States under the Act followed his reading of § 13(b) under which a person is to be deemed interested in a labor dispute only if 'engaged in the same industry, trade, craft, or occupation in which such dispute occurs.' His brief, elliptical remark plainly conveyed that the business of the Government of the United States is not an 'industry, trade, craft, or occupation.' This is made unequivocally clear by the colloquy that followed. Mr. Blanton inquired whether Mr. LaGuardia was willing 'for the Army and the Navy to form a labor union and affiliate themselves with the American Federation of Labor and not permit the Government of the United States to preserve its rights?' The short answer for Mr. LaGuardia to have made was 'The United States is not subject to the provisions of the Act, because by employer we mean a private employer.' Instead of that, Mr. LaGuardia replied, 'Oh, the Army and the Navy are not in a trade, craft, or occupation.' In short, the scope of the limitation upon the jurisdiction of the courts depended not on party, but on subject matter. Representative Blanton's amendment was rejected by 125 to 21.

The second Representative upon whom the Court relies is Mr. Michener. He said, 'Be it remembered that this bill does not attempt to legislate concerning Government employees. I do not believe that the enactment of this bill into law will take away from the Federal Government any rights which it has under existing law, to seek and obtain injunctive relief where the same is necessary for the functioning of the Government.' (75 Cong.Rec. 5464.) Later he added ' * *  * This deals with labor disputes between individuals, not where the Government is involved. It is my notion that under this bill the Government can function with an injunction, if that is necessary in order to carry out the purpose of the Government. I should like to see this clarified, but I want to go on record as saying that under my interpretation of this bill the Federal Government will not at any time be prevented from applying for an injunction, if one is necessary in order that the Government may function.' (Id. at 5509.) What Mr. Michener gave as his interpretation of what survived the Norris-LaGuardia Act, was precisely the claim of the Government in asking for the Debs injunction. That injunction was sought and granted in order that the Government might function. Insofar, then, as Mr. Michener's statements imply that the United States could again get a Debs injunction, his understanding is belied by the whole history of the legislation, as reflected in its terms. These statements can only mean, then, that if, say, employees in the Treasury Department had to be enjoined so that government could go on, it was Representative Michener's view that an injunction could issue. No attempt was made to make this view explicit in the Act. It was not discussed, and only one statement appears to share it. In any event, it does not imply a broader exemption than that of which Representative LaGuardia spoke.

It is to be noted that the discussion in the House f llowed passage in the Senate of that which subsequently became the Act. It is a matter of history that the Senate Judiciary Committee was the drafting and driving force behind the Bill. The Bill had extended consideration by a subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee followed by weighty reports and full discussion on the Senate floor. We are not pointed to a suggestion or a hint in the Senate proceedings that the withdrawal of jurisdiction to issue injunctions in labor disputes was subject to a latent exception as to injunctions sought by the Government. The whole contemporaneous history is against it. The experience which gave rise to the Norris-LaGuardia Act only underscores the unrestricted limitation upon the jurisdiction of the courts, except in situations of which this is not one. To find implications in the fact that in the course of the debates it was not explicitly asserted that the district courts could not issue an injunction in a labor controversy even at the behest of the Government is to find the silence of Congress more revealing than the natural meaning of legislation and the history which begot it. The remarks of Mr. LaGuardia and Mr. Michener ought not to be made the equivalent of writing an amendment into the Act. It is one thing to draw on all relevant aids for shedding light on the dark places of a statute. To allow inexplicit remarks in the give-and-take of debate to contradict the very terms of legislation and the history behind it is to put out the controlling light on meaning shed by the explicit provisions of an Act in its setting.

But even if we assume that the Act was not intended to apply to labor disputes involving 'employees' of the United States, are the miners in the case before us 'employees' of the United States within the meaning of this interpolated exception? It can hardly be denied that the relation of the miners to the United States is a hybrid one. Clearly, they have a relation to the Government other than that of employees of plants not under Government operation. Equally clearly, they have a relation and a status different from the relation and status of the clerks at the Treasury Department. Never in the country's history have the terms of employment of the millions in Government service been established by collective bargaining. But the conditions of employment-hours, wages holidays, vacations, Health and Welfare Program, etc.-were so fixed for the miners during the period of Government seizure. The proper interpretation of this collective agreement between the Government and the United Mine Workers is precisely what is at the bottom of this controversy. Neither a spontaneous nor a sophisticated characterization would resort to the phrase 'Government employees' without more, in speaking of the miners during the operation of the mines by the Government. The only concrete characterization of the status of employees in seized plants was expressed by Under Secretary Patterson at a hearing on the predecessor bill to that which became the law under which this seizure was made. He spoke of the role of the Government as that of 'A receiver that would be charged with the continuity of operation of the plant'. Nothing in the Acts authorizing seizure of private plants indicates that the employees of these plants were to be considered employees of the United States in the usual and natural meaning of the term. In the full debates on bills providing for Government seizure of plants, Congressional leaders clearly indicated their understanding that as the law then stood there could be no injunctions in labor disputes in seized plants.

But not only was such the understanding when the legal question emerged in the course of considering the need of war legislation. Recent legislation and its history are relevant not merely because they show later understanding of the terms of an older statute. The War Labor Disputes Act of 1943 is directly and primarily involved in this case. The whole controversy arises under the authority to seize mines given by that Act. The real question before us is whether in authorizing such seizure and operation Congress also gave to the United States the right to prevent interference with its statutory operation through the equitable remedies here invoked.

By the War Labor Disputes Act Congress created a new relationship among the Government, the plant owners, the employees. The rights, duties, remedies incident to that relation are those given by the Act. Congress naturally addressed itself to possible interferences with the Government's operation of seized plants. It dealt specifically with this subject. It gave the Government specific remedies which it might invoke against such interference. Remedy by injunction was not given. It was not merely omitted. A fair reading of the legislative history shows that it was expressly and definitively denied. As reported out of the Senate Committee, S. 796 provided for plant seizure. It did not include the injunction among the remedies for in erference with Government operation. But when the Bill reached the floor of the Senate, Senator Connally, sponsor of the Bill, offered and urged an amendment giving the district courts jurisdiction to restrain violations of the measure. He accepted, somewhat reluctantly, the amendment of Senator Wagner to limit the proposed amendment to an injunction at the behest of the Attorney General, precisely as was here sought and granted. On motion of Senator Danaher, this proposal was rejected by the Senate after full debate, participated in by Senators especially conversant with the history and scope of the existing remedies available to the Government. With this remedy denied to the Government, the Bill was passed and sent to the House. The House did not like the Bill. Its version did not see fit specifically to add to the limited seizure provisions of the Selective Service Act of 1940, 50 U.S.C.A.Appendix § 301 et seq., although apparently it assumed that there could be seizure under existing law in the case of failure by defense plants to produce as a result of labor troubles. Instead, the House version provided stringent anti-strike and anti-lockout provisions as to plants in private operation, and by specific amendment to the Norris-LaGuardia Act the district courts were authorized to restrain violations of such provisions. But this pro tanto repeal of the Norris-LaGuardia Act was not made available to the United States as a remedy against interference with operation of plants seized under the earlier, 1940 Act.

The bill then went to conference. What came out was, so far as here material, the bill that had passed the Senate. The United States was granted power to seize and operate defense plants whose production was hampered by labor disputes. Specific remedies were formulated by Congress against interference with the Government's operation. The injunction was not included. In neither house was further attempt made to reintroduce the Connally proposal giving the Government relief by injunction. Nor was it suggested that the Government had such redress under existing law. On the floor of the Senate, Senator Thomas of Utah, Chairman of the Committee on Education and Labor, said:

'Mr. President, I ask the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. Hatch), the Senator from Connecticut (Mr. Danaher), and the Senator from Texas (Mr. Connally), the sponsor of the bill, whether there is a unanimous opinion on the part of those three great lawyers that there will not be a reopening of the district courts to industry-labor disputes? * *  * I should like that point to be made so firmly and so strongly that no lawyer in the land who would like to take advantage of the situation created by the mere mention of the words 'district court' will resort to the court in order to confuse our industry-labor relations.'

'Mr. President, * *  * I think I speak for the Senator from Vermont and the Senator from New Mexico and the Senator from Connecticut and also the Senator from Indiana (Mr. Van Nuys), although he is not present, when I say that there is no jurisdiction whatever conferred by this bill providing for resort to the United States district court, except the one mentioned by the Senator from Connecticut, which is merely the right to go there for a civil action for damages, and no jurisdiction whatever is given over labor disputes. Does that answer the Senator?'

'Mr. Thomas of Utah. I thank the Senator for making that statement and I hope it will satisfy the lawyers of the country.

'Mr. Connally. I am sure it will.'

Under these circumstances the Bill became law, and the seizure giving rise to this controversy was made under that law. The separate items of this legislative history cannot be judged in isolation. They must be considered together, and as part of the course of legislation dealing with injunctions in labor disputes. To find that the Government has the right which Senator Connally's amendment sought to confer but which the Congress withheld is to say that voting down the amendment had the same effect as voting it up.

Events since the passage of the Act underscore what would appear to be the controlling legislative history of the War Labor Disputes Act, and prove that Congress saw fit not to authorize district courts to issue an injunction in cases like this. To meet the grave crisis growing out of the trike on the railroads last May, Congress, upon the recommendation of the President and the Attorney General, deemed additional legislation necessary for dealing with labor disputes. The proposals in each house carried a provision which authorized an injunction to issue for violation of the War Labor Disputes Act. Senator Mead proposed an amendment to delete the provisions for injunctions. In the debates that followed no one suggested that the new proposal was unnecessary, that the jurisdiction proposed to be conferred already existed, or that if granted, as requested by the Attorney General, it would not, as Senator Mead claimed, repeal pro tanto the Norris-LaGuardia Act. The debates show clearly that what was contemplated was a change in the War Labor Disputes Act, whereby a new and an additional remedy would be authorized. The Bill never became law.

As is well known, as the debates clearly show, as Senator Connally admitted, the War Labor Disputes Act was directed primarily against stoppage in the coal mines. The situation that Congress feared was exactly that which has occurred and which underlies this controversy. To deal with the situation, Congress gave the United States the power to seize the mines. To effectuate this power, the Government was given authority to invoke criminal penalties for interferences with the operation of the mines. Senator Connally sought more. He wanted Congress to empower the district courts to enjoin interference. The Senate did not want an injunction to issue and voted the proposal down. The Senate's position was adopted by the Conference Committee. The House of Representatives yielded its view and approved the Conference report. The whole course of legislation indicates that Congress withheld the remedy of injunction. This Court now holds that Congress authorized the injunction.

I concur in the Court's opinion insofar as it is not inconsistent with these views, and, under the compulsion of the ruling of the majority that the court below had jurisdiction to issue its orders, I join in the Court's judgment.