Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/409/824/
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 13:13:10+00:00

Document:
"Any justice or judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any case in which he has a substantial interest, has been of counsel, is or has been a material witness, or is so related to or connected with any party or his attorney as to render it improper, in his opinion, for him to sit on the trial, appeal, or other proceeding therein."
"Under the circumstances of the instant case, MR. JUSTICE REHNQUIST's impartiality is clearly questionable because of his appearance as an expert witness for the Justice Department and Senate hearings inquiring into the subject matter of the case, because of his intimate knowledge of the evidence underlying the respondents' allegations, and because of his public statements about the lack of merit in respondents' claims."
Respondents are substantially correct in characterizing my appearance before the Ervin Subcommittee as an "expert witness for the Justice Department" on the subject of statutory and constitutional law dealing with the authority of the Executive Branch to gather information. They are also correct in stating that during the course of my testimony at that hearing and on other occasions, I expressed an understanding of the law, as established by decided cases of this Court and of other courts, which was contrary to the contentions of respondents in this case.
"As you might imagine, the Justice Department, in selecting a witness to respond to your inquiries, had to pick someone who did not have personal knowledge in every field. So I can simply give you my understanding. . . ."
"However, in connection with the case of Tatum v. Laird, now pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, one print out from the Army computer has been retained for the inspection of the court. It will thereafter be destroyed."
My recollection is that the first time I learned of the existence of the case of Laird v. Tatum, other than having probably seen press accounts of it, was at the time I was preparing to testify as a witness before the Subcommittee in March 1971. I believe the case was then being appealed to the Court of Appeals by respondents. The Office of the Deputy Attorney General, which is customarily responsible for collecting material from the various divisions to be used in preparing the Department's statement, advised me or one of my staff as to the arrangement with respect to the computer print out from the Army Data Bank, and it was incorporated into the prepared statement which I read to the Subcommittee. I had then and have now no personal knowledge of the arrangement, nor so far as I know have I ever seen or been apprised of the contents of this particular print out. Since the print out had been lodged with the Justice Department by the Department of the Army, I later authorized its transmittal to the staff of the subcommittee at the request of the latter.
At the request of Senator Hruska, one of the members of the Subcommittee, I supervised the preparation of a memorandum of law which the record of the hearings indicates was filed on September 20, 1971. Respondents refer to it in their petition, but no copy is attached, and the hearing records do not contain a copy. I would expect such a memorandum to have commented on the decision of the Court of Appeals in Laird v. Tatum, treating it along with other applicable precedents in attempting to state what the Department thought the law to be in this general area.
called "mandatory" provisions of that section require disqualification of a Justice or judge "in any case in which he has a substantial interest, has been of counsel, (or) has been a material witness . . .."
but with respect to which I assisted in drafting the brief, and in S & E Contractors v. United States, 406 U. S. 1 (1972), in which I had only an advisory role which terminated immediately prior to the commencement of the litigation, I disqualified myself. Since I did not have even an advisory role in the conduct of the case of Laird v. Tatum, the application of such a role would not require or authorize disqualification here.
"is so related to or connected with any party or his attorney as to render it improper, in his opinion, for him to sit on the trial, appeal, or other proceeding therein."
"Other relationships between the Court and the Department of Justice, however, might well be different. The Department's problem is special because it is the largest law office in the world and has cases by the hundreds of thousands and lawyers by the thousands. For the most part, the relationship of the Attorney General to most of those matters is purely formal. As between the Assistant Attorneys General for the various departmental divisions there is almost no connection."
Frank, supra, 35 Law & Contemporary Problems at 47.
similar situations differently. In Schneiderman v. United States, 320 U. S. 118 (1943), a case brought and tried during the time Mr. Justice Murphy was Attorney General, but defended on appeal during the time that Mr. Justice Jackson was Attorney General, the latter disqualified himself but the former did not. 320 U.S. at 320 U. S. 207.
@And it has always seemed to the Court that when a district judge could not sit in a case because of his previous association with it, or a circuit court of appeals judge, it was our manifest duty to take the same position.
Hearings Before Committee on the Judiciary on H.R. 2808, 78th Cong., 1st Sess.
(1943), quoted in Frank, supra, 56 Yale Law Journal at 612.
Connery Fair Labor Standards Act." Not only did he introduce one of the early versions of the Act, but as Chairman of the Senate Labor and Education Committee, he presided over lengthy hearings on the subject of the bill and presented the favorable report of that Committee to the Senate. See S.Rep. No. 884, 75th Cong., 1st Sess. (1937). Nonetheless, he sat in the case which upheld the constitutionality of that Act, United States v. Darby, 312 U. S. 100 (1941), and in later cases construing it, including Jewel Ridge Coal Corp. v. Local 6167, UMW, 325 U. S. 161 (1945). In the latter case, a petition for rehearing requested that he disqualify himself because one of his former law partners argued the case, and Justices Jackson and Frankfurter may be said to have implicitly criticized him for failing to do so. [Footnote 3] But to my knowledge, his Senate role with respect to the Act was never a source of criticism for his participation in the above cases.
"The book was in no sense a disinterested inquiry. Its authors' commitment to the judgment that the labor injunction should be neutralized as a legal weapon against unions gives the book its energy and direction. It is, then, a brief, even a 'downright brief' as a critical reviewer would have it."
Kadish, Labor and the Law, in Felix Frankfurter The Judge 165 (W. Mendelson ed. 1964).
LaGuardia Act, 47 Stat. 70, 29 U.S.C. §§ 101-115. This Act was designed by its proponents to correct the abusive use by the federal courts of their injunctive powers in labor disputes. Yet in addition to sitting in one of the leading cases interpreting the scope of the Act, United States v. Hutcheson, 312 U. S. 219 (1941), Justice Frankfurter wrote the Court's opinion.
Justice Jackson, in McGrath v. Kristensen, 340 U. S. 162 (1950), participated in a case raising exactly the same issue which he had decided as Attorney General (in a way opposite to that in which the Court decided it). 340 U.S. at 340 U. S. 176. Mr. Frank notes that Chief Justice Vinson, who had been active in drafting and preparing tax legislation while a member of the House of Representatives, never hesitated to sit in cases involving that legislation when he was Chief Justice.
would be warranted in saying that he implied some reservations about the holding of that case. See pp. 205, 209-211. Nine years later, Chief Justice Hughes authored the Court's opinion in West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish, 300 U. S. 379 (1937), in which a closely divided Court overruled Adkins. I have never heard any suggestion that because of his discussion of the subject in his book, he should have recused himself.
"In short, Supreme Court Justices disqualify when they have a dollar interest; when they are related to a party and more recently, when they are related to counsel; and when the particular matter was in one of their former law offices during their association or, when in the government, they dealt with the precise matter and particularly with the precise case; otherwise, generally no."
Frank, supra, 35 Law & Contemporary Problems at 50.
Not only is the sort of public statement disqualification upon which respondents rely not covered by the terms of the applicable statute, then, but it does not appear to me to be supported by the practice of previous Justices of this Court. Since there is little controlling authority on the subject, and since, under the existing practice of the Court, disqualification has been a matter of individual decision, I suppose that one who felt very strongly that public statement disqualification is a highly desirable thing might find a way to read it into the discretionary portion of the statute by implication. I find little to commend the concept on its merits, however, and I am therefore not disposed to construe the statutory language to embrace it.
a Court none of whose members had expressed the views that I expressed about the relationship between surveillance and First Amendment rights while serving as an Assistant Attorney General. I would think it likewise true that counsel for Darby would have preferred not to have to argue before Mr. Justice Black; that counsel for Kristensen would have preferred not to argue before Mr. Justice Jackson; [Footnote 4] that counsel for the United States would have preferred not to argue before Mr. Justice Frankfurter; and that counsel for West Coast Hotel Co. would have preferred a Court which did not include Chief Justice Hughes.
when they appraise the quality and image of the judiciary in their own community.'"
the same. Justice Holmes, after his appointment to this Court, sat in several cases which reviewed decisions of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts rendered, with his participation while he was Chief Justice of that court. See Worcester v. Worcester Consolidated Street R. Co., 196 U. S. 539 (1905), reviewing 182 Mass. 49; Dunbar v. Dunbar, 190 U. S. 340 (1903), reviewing 180 Mass. 170 (1901); Glidden v. Harrington, 189 U. S. 255 (1903), reviewing 179 Mass. 486 (1901); and Williams v. Parker, 188 U. S. 491 (1903), reviewing 174 Mass. 476 (1899).
"Supreme Court Justices are strong minded men, and on the general subject matters which come before them, they do have propensities; the course of decision cannot be accounted for in any other way."
Frank, supra, 35 Law & Contemporary Problems at 48.
simply because I do regard the question as a fairly debatable one, even though upon analysis I would resolve it in favor of sitting.
equally divided Court. The consequence attending such a result is, of course, that the principle of law presented by the case is left unsettled. The undesirability of such a disposition is obviously not a reason for refusing to disqualify oneself where in fact one deems himself disqualified, but I believe it is a reason for not "bending over backwards" in order to deem one's self disqualified.
The prospect of affirmance by an equally divided Court, unsatisfactory enough in a single case, presents even more serious problems where companion cases reaching opposite results are heard together here. During the six months in which I have sat as a Justice of this Court, there were at least three such instances. [Footnote 6] Since one of the stated reasons for granting certiorari is to resolve a conflict among other federal courts or state courts, the frequency of such instance is not surprising. Yet affirmance of each of such conflicting results by an equally divided Court would lay down "one rule in Athens and another rule in Rome" with a vengeance. And since the notion of "public statement" disqualification which I understand respondents to advance appears to have no ascertainable time limit, it is questionable when or if such an unsettled state of the law could be resolved.
practice of the former Justices of this Court guarantee a litigant that each judge will start off from dead center in his willingness or ability to reconcile the opposing arguments of counsel with his understanding of the Constitution and the law. That being the case, it is not a ground for disqualification that a judge has prior, to his nomination, expressed his then understanding of the meaning of some particular provision of the Constitution.
In a motion of this kind, there is not apt to be anything akin to the "record" which supplies the factual basis for adjudication in most litigated matters. The judge will presumably know more about the factual background of his involvement in matters which form the basis of the motion than do the movants, but with the passage of any time at all, his recollection will fade except to the extent it is refreshed by transcripts such as those available here. If the motion before me turned only on disputed factual inferences, no purpose would be served by my detailing my own recollection of the relevant facts. Since, however, the main thrust of respondents' motion is based on what seems to me an incorrect interpretation of the applicable statute, I believe that this is the exceptional case where an opinion is warranted.
See Executive Report No. 91-92, 91st Cong., 1st Sess., Nomination of Clement F. Haynsworth, Jr., pp. 10-11.
See denial of petition for rehearing in Jewel Ridge Coal Corp. v. Local 6167, UMW, 325 U. S. 897 (1945) (Jackson, J., concurring).
The fact that Mr. Justice Jackson reversed his earlier opinion after sitting in Kristensen does not seem to me to bear on the disqualification issue. A judge will usually be required to make any decision as to disqualification before reaching any determination as to how he will vote if he does sit.
In terms of propriety, rather than disqualification, I would distinguish quite sharply between a public statement made prior to nomination for the bench, on the one hand, and a public statement made by a nominee to the bench. For the latter to express any but the most general observation about the law would suggest that, in order to obtain favorable consideration of his nomination, he deliberately was announcing in advance, without benefit of judicial oath, briefs, or argument, how he would decide a particular question that might come before him as a judge.
Vanderburgh Airport Authority District v. Delta Airlines Inc., 405 U. S. 726 (1972), and Northeast Airlines Inc. v. New Hampshire Aeronautics Commission, 405 U. S. 707 (1972).
Petitioners in Gravel v. United States, 408 U. S. 606 (1972), have filed a petition for rehearing which asserts as one of the grounds that I should have disqualified myself in that case. Because respondents' motion in Laird was addressed to me, and because it seemed to me to be seriously and responsibly urged, I have dealt with my reasons for denying it at some length. Because I believe that the petition for rehearing in Gravel, insofar as it deals with disqualification, possesses none of these characteristics, there is no occasion for me to treat it in a similar manner. Since such motions have in the past been treated by the Court as being addressed to the individual Justice involved, however, I do venture the observation that in my opinion, the petition, insofar as it relates to disqualification, verges on the frivolous. While my peripheral advisory role in New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U. S. 713 (1971), would have warranted disqualification had I been on the Court when that case was heard, it could not conceivably warrant disqualification in Gravel, a different case raising entirely different constitutional issues.

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