Source: http://openjurist.org/print/26623
Timestamp: 2015-11-27 19:26:17
Document Index: 257603080

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 301', '§ 185', '§ 185', '§ 301', '§ 301', '§ 301', '§ 301', '§ 301', '§ 301', '§ 301', '§ 301', '§ 301', '§ 301', '§ 301', '§ 301', '§ 301', '§ 301', '§ 301', '§ 301', '§ 301', '§ 301', '§ 301', '§ 2', '§ 301', '§ 101', '§ 101', '§ 4', '§ 301', '§ 151', '§ 151', '§ 7', '§ 301', '§ 185', '§ 185', '§ 301', '§ 301', '§ 301', '§ 301', '§ 301', '§ 185', '§ 301', '§ 20', '§ 52', '§ 402', '§ 101', '§ 301', '§ 301', '§ 301', '§ 301', '§ 1', '§ 1', '§ 301', '§ 301', '§ 301', '§ 301', '§ 301', '§ 301', '§ 301', '§ 301', '§ 301', '§ 301', '§ 2', '§ 23', '§ 46', '§ 1', '§ 301', '§ 301', '§ 2283', '§ 2283', '§ 301', '§ 301', '§ 301', '§ 301']

353 US 448 Textile Workers Union of America v.
Home > 353 US 448 Textile Workers Union of America v.
353 US 448 Textile Workers Union of America v. 353 U.S. 448
77 S.Ct. 923
1 L.Ed.2d 972
TEXTILE WORKERS UNION OF AMERICA, Petitioner,v.
LINCOLN MILLS OF ALABAMA. GOODALL-SANFORD, Inc., Petitioner, v. UNITED TEXTILE WORKERS OF AMERICA, A.F.L. LOCAL 1802, and United Textile Workers of America, A.F.L. GENERAL ELECTRIC COMPANY, Petitioner, v. LOCAL 205, UNITED ELECTRICAL, RADIO AND MACHINE WORKERS OF AMERICA (U.E.).
Nos. 211, 262 and 276.
Petitioner-union entered into a collective bargaining agreement in 1953 with respondent-employer, the agreement to run one year and from year to year thereafter, unless terminated on specified notices. The agreement provided that there would be no strikes or work stoppages and that grievances would be handled pursuant to a specified procedure. The last step in the grievance procedure—a step that could be taken by either party—was arbitration.
This controversy involves several grievances that concern work loads and work assignments. The grievances were processed through the various steps in the grievance procedure and were finally denied by the employer. The union requested arbitration, and the employer refused. Thereupon the union brought this suit in the District Court to compel arbitration.
The District Court concluded that it had jurisdiction and ordered the employer to comply with the grievance arbitration provisions of the collective bargaining agreement. The Court of Appeals reversed by a divided vote. 230 F.2d 81. It held that, although the District Court had jurisdiction to entertain the suit, the court had no authority founded either in federal or state law to grant the relief. The case is here on a petition for a writ of certiorari which we granted because of the importance of the problem and the contrariety of views in the courts. 352 U.S. 821, 77 S.Ct. 54, 1 L.Ed.2d 46.
The starting point of our inquiry is § 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947, 61 Stat. 156, 29 U.S.C. § 185, 29 U.S.C.A. § 185, which provides:
'(a) Suits for violation of contracts between an employer and a labor organization representing employees in an industry affecting commerce as defined in this chapter, or between any such labor organizations, may be brought in any district court of the United States having jurisdiction of the parties, without respect to the amount in controversy or without regard to the citizenship of the parties.
'(b) Any labor organization which represents employees in an industry affecting commerce as defined in this chapter and any employer whose activities affect commerce as defined in this chapter shall be bound by the acts of its agents. Any such labor organization may sue or be sued as an entity and in behalf of the employees whom it represents in the courts of the United States. Any money judgment against a labor organization in a district court of the United States shall be enforceable only against the organization as an entity and against its assets, and shall not be enforceable against any individual member or his assets.'
There has been considerable litigation involving § 301 and courts have construed it differently. There is one view that § 301(a) merely gives federal district courts jurisdiction in controversies that involve labor organizations in industries affecting commerce, without regard to diversity of citizenship or the amount in controversy.1 Under that view § 301(a) would not be the source of substantive law; it would neither supply federal law to resolve these controversies nor turn the federal judges to state law for answers to the questions. Other courts—the overwhelming number of them—hold that § 301(a) is more than jurisdictional2—that it authorizes federal courts to fashion a body of federal law for the enforcement of these collective bargaining agreements and includes within that federal law specific performance of promises to arbitrate grievances under collective bargaining agreements. Perhaps the leading decision representing that point of view is the one rendered by Judge Wyzanski in Textile Workers Union of America (C.I.O.) v. American Thread Co., D.C., 113 F.Supp. 137. That is our construction of § 301(a), which means that the agreement to arbitrate grievance disputes, contained in this collective bargaining agreement, should be specifically enforced.
From the face of the Act it is apparent that § 301(a) and § 301(b) supplement one another. Section 301(b) makes it possible for a labor organization, representing employees in an industry affecting commerce, to sue and be sued as an entity in the federal courts. Section 301(b) in other words provides the procedural remedy lacking at common law. Section 301(a) certainly does something more than that. Plainly, it supplies the basis upon which the federal district courts may take jurisdiction and apply the procedural rule of § 301(b). The question is whether § 301(a) is more than jurisdictional.
The legislative history of § 301 is somewhat cloudy and confusing. But there are a few shafts of light that illuminate our problem.
The bills, as they passed the House and the Senate, contained provisions which would have made the failure to abide by an agreement to arbitrate an unfair labor practice. S.Rep. No. 105, 80th Cong., 1st Sess., pp. 20—21, 23; H.R.Rep. No. 245, 80th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 21.3 This feature of the law was dropped in Conference. As the Conference Report stated, 'Once parties have made a collective bargaining contract, the enforcement of that contract should be left to the usual processes of the law and not to the National Labor Relations Board.' H.R.Conf.Rep. No. 510, 80th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 42.
Both the Senate and the House took pains to provide for 'the usual processes of the law' by provisions which were the substantial equivalent of § 301(a) in its present form. Both the Senate Report and the House Report indicate a primary concern that unions as well as employees should be bound to collective bargaining contracts. But there was also a broader concern—a concern with a procedure for making such agreements enforceable in the courts by either party. At one point the Senate Report, supra, p. 15, states, 'We feel that the aggrieved party should also have a right of action in the Federal courts. Such a policy is completely in accord with the purpose of the Wagner Act which the Supreme Court declared was 'to compel employers to bargain collectively with their employees to the end that an employment contract, binding on both parties, should be made * * *."
Congress was also interested in promoting collective bargaining that ended with agreements not to strike.4 The Senate Report, supra, p. 16 states:
'If unions can break agreements with relative impunity, then such agreements do not tend to stabilize industrial relations. The execution of an agreement does not by itself promote industrial peace. The chief advantage which an employer can reasonably expect from a collective labor agreement is assurance of uninterrupted operation during the term of the agreement. Without some effective method of assuring freedom from economic warfare for the term of the agreement, there is little reason why an employer would desire to sign such a contract.
'Consequently, to encourage the making of agreements and to promote industrial peace through faithful performance by the parties, collective agreements affecting interstate commerce should be enforceable in the Federal courts. Our amendment would provide for suits by unions as legal entities and against unions as legal entities in the Federal courts in disputes affecting commerce.'
Thus collective bargaining contracts were made 'equally binding and enforceable on both parties.' Id., p. 15. As stated in the House Report, supra, p. 6, the new provision 'makes labor organizations equally responsible with employers for contract violations and provides for suit by either against the other in the United States district courts.' To repeat, the Senate Report, supra, p. 17, summed up the philosophy of § 301 as follows: 'Statutory recognition of the collective agreement as a valid, binding, and enforceable contract is a logical and necessary step. It will promote a higher degree of responsibility upon the parties to such agreements, and will thereby promote industrial peace.' Plainly the agreement to arbitrate grievance disputes is the quid pro quo for an agreement not to strike. Viewed in this light, the legislation does more than confer jurisdiction in the federal courts over labor organizations. It expresses a federal policy that federal courts should enforce these agreements on behalf of or against labor oganizations and that industrial peace can be best obtained only in that way.
To be sure, there is a great medley of ideas reflected in the hearings, reports, and debates on this Act. Yet, to repeat, the entire tenor of the history indicates that the agreement to arbitrate grievance disputes was considered as quid pro quo of a no-strike agreement. And when in the House the debate narrowed to the question whether § 301 was more than jurisdictional, it became abundantly clear that the purpose of the section was to provide the necessary legal remedies. Section 302 of the House bill,5 the substantial equivalent of the present § 301, was being described by Mr. Hartley, the sponsor of the bill in the House:
'Mr. Barden. Mr. Chairman, I take this time for the purpose of asking the Chairman a question, and in asking the question I want it understood that it is intended to make a part of the record that may hereafter be referred to as history of the legislation.
'It is my understanding that section 302, the section dealing with equal responsibility under collective bargaining contracts in strike actions and proceedings in district courts contemplates not only the ordinary lawsuits for damages but also such other remedial proceedings, both legal and equitable, as might be appropriate in the circumstances; in other words, proceedings could, for example, be brought by the employers, the labor organizations, or interested individual employees under the Declaratory Judgments Act in order to secure declarations from the Court of legal rights under the contract.
'Mr. Hartley. The interpretation the gentleman has just given of that section is absolutely correct.' 93 Cong.Rec. 3656 3657.
It seems, therefore, clear to us that Congress adopted a policy which placed sanctions behind agreements to arbitrate grievance disputes,6 by implication rejecting the common-law rule, discussed in Red Cross Line v. Atlantic Fruit Co., 264 U.S. 109, 44 S.Ct. 274, 68 L.Ed. 582, against enforcement of executory agreements to arbitrate.7 We would undercut the Act and defeat its policy if we read § 301 narrowly as only conferring jurisdiction over labor organizations.
The question then is, what is the substantive law to be applied in suits under § 301(a)? We conclude that the substantive law to apply in suits under § 301(a) is federal law, which the courts must fashion from the policy of our national labor laws. See Mendelsohn, Enforceability of Arbitration Agreements Under Taft-Hartley Section 301, 66 Yale L.J. 167. The Labor Management Relations Act expressly furnishes some substantive law. It points out what the parties may or may not do in certain situations. Other problems will lie in the penumbra of express statutory mandates. dates. Some will lack express statutory sanction but will be solved by looking at the policy of the legislation and fashioning a remedy that will effectuate that policy. The range of judicial inventiveness will be determined by the nature of the problem. See Board of Commissioners of Jackson County v. United States, 308 U.S. 343, 351, 60 S.Ct. 285, 288, 84 L.Ed. 313. Federal interpretation of the federal law will govern, not state law. Cf. Jerome v. United States, 318 U.S. 101, 104, 63 S.Ct. 483, 485, 87 L.Ed. 640. But state law, if compatible with the purpose of § 301, may be resorted to in order to find the rule that will best effectuate the federal policy. See Board of Commissioners of Jackson County v. United States, supra, 308 U.S. at pages 351—352, 60 S.Ct. at pages 288—289. Any state law applied, however, will be absorbed as federal law and will not be an independent source of private rights.
It is not uncommon for federal courts to fashion federal law where federal rights are concerned. See Clearfield Trust Co. v. United States, 318 U.S. 363, 366—367, 63 S.Ct. 573, 574—575, 87 L.Ed. 838; National Metropolitan Bank v. United States, 323 U.S. 454, 65 S.Ct. 354, 89 L.Ed. 383. Congress has indicated by § 301(a) the purpose to follow that course here. There is no constitutional difficulty. Article III, § 2, extends the judicial power to cases 'arising under * * * the Laws of the United States * * *.' The power of Congress to regulate these labor-management controversies under the Commerce Clause is plain. Houston East & West Texas R. Co. v. United States, 234 U.S. 342, 34 S.Ct. 833, 58 L.Ed. 1341; National Labor Relations Board v. Jones & Laughlin Corp., 301 U.S. 1, 57 S.Ct. 615, 81 L.Ed. 893. A case or controversy arising under § 301(a) is, therefore, one within the purview of judicial power as defined in Article III.
The question remains whether jurisdiction to compel arbitration of grievance disputes is withdrawn by the Norris-LaGuardia Act, 47 Stat. 70, 29 U.S.C. § 101 at seq., 29 U.S.C.A. § 101 et seq. Section 7 of that Act prescribes stiff procedural requirements for issuing an injunction in a labor dispute. The kinds of acts which had given rise to abuse of the power to enjoin are listed in § 4. The failure to arbitrate was not a part and parcel of the abuses against which the Act was aimed. Section 8 of the Norris-LaGuardia Act does, indeed, indicate a congressional policy toward settlement of labor disputes by arbitration, for it denies injunctive relief to any person who has failed to make 'every reasonable effort' to settle the dispute by negotiation, mediation, or 'voluntary arbitration.' Though a literal reading might bring the dispute within the terms of the Act (see Cox, Grievance Arbitration in the Federal Courts, 67 Harv.L.Rev. 591, 602—604), we see no justification in policy for restricting § 301(a) to damage suits, leaving specific performance of a contract to arbitrate grievance disputes to the inapposite8 procedural requirements of that Act. Moreover, we held in Virginia R. Co. v. System Federation, 300 U.S. 515, 57 S.Ct. 592, 81 L.Ed. 789, and in Graham v. Brotherhood of Firemen, 338 U.S. 232, 237, 70 S.Ct. 14, 17, 94 L.Ed. 22 that the Norris-LaGuardia Act does not deprive federal courts of jurisdiction to compel compliance with the mandates of the Railway Labor Act, 45 U.S.C.A. § 151 et seq. The mandates there involved concerned racial discrimination. Yet those decisions were not based on any peculiarities of the Railway Labor Act. We followed the same course in Syres v. Oil Workers International Union, 350 U.S. 892, 76 S.Ct. 152, 100 L.Ed. 785, which was governed by the National Labor Relations Act, 29 U.S.C.A. § 151 et seq. There an injunction was sought against racial discrimination in application of a collective bargaining agreement; and we allowed the injunction to issue. The congressional policy in favor of the enforcement of agreements to arbitrate grievance disputes being clear,9 there is no reason to submit them to the requirements of § 7 of the Norris-LaGuardia Act.
A question of mootness was raised on oral argument. It appears that since the date of the decision in the Court of Appeals respondent has terminated its operations and has contracted to sell its mill properties. All work in the mill ceased in March, 1957. Some of the grievances, however, ask for back pay for increased work loads; and the collective bargaining agreement provides that 'the Board of Arbitration shall have the right to adjust compensation retroactive to the date of the change.' Insofar as the grievances sought restoration of workloads and job assignments, the case is, of course, moot. But to the extent that they sought a monetary award, the case is a continuing controversy.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed and the cause is remanded to that court for proceedings in conformity with this opinion.
Mr. Justice BURTON, whom Mr. Justice HARLAN joins, concurring in the result.
This suit was brought in a United States District Court under § 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947, 61 Stat. 156, 29 U.S.C. § 185, 29 U.S.C.A. § 185, seeking specific enforcement of the arbitration provisions of a collective-bargaining contract. The District Court had jurisdiction over the action since it involved an obligation running to a union—a union controversy—and not uniquely personal rights of employees sought to be enforced by a union. Cf. Association of Westinghouse Salaried Employees v. Westinghouse Elec. Corp., 348 U.S. 437, 75 S.Ct. 489, 99 L.Ed. 510. Having jurisdiction over the suit, the court was not powerless to fashion an appropriate federal remedy. The power to decree specific performance of a collectively bargained agreement to arbitrate finds its source in § 301 itself,1 and in a Federal District Court's inherent equitable powers, nurtured by a congressional policy to encourage and enforce labor arbitration in industries affecting commerce.2
I do not subscribe to the conclusion of the Court that the substantive law to be applied in a suit under § 301 is federal law. At the same time, I agree with Judge Magruder in International Brotherhood v. W. L. Mead, Inc., 1 Cir., 230 F.2d 576, that some federal rights may necessarily be involved in a § 301 case, and hence that the constitutionality of § 301 can be upheld as a congressional grant to Federal District Courts of what has been called 'protective jurisdiction.'
Mr. Justice FRANKFURTER dissenting. For dissenting opinion see 353 U.S. 448, 77 S.Ct. 923.
The Court has avoided the difficult problems raised by § 301 of the Taft-Hartley Act, 61 Stat. 156, 29 U.S.C. § 185, 29 U.S.C.A. s 185,1 by attributing to the section an occult content. This plainly procedural section is transmuted into a mandate to the federal courts to fashion a whole body of substantive federal law appropriate for the complicated and touchy problems raised by collective bargaining. I have set forth in my opinion in Association of Westinghouse Salaried Employees v. Westinghouse Electric Corp. the detailed reasons why I believe that § 301 cannot be so construed, even if constitutional questions cannot be avoided. 348 U.S. 437, 441—449, 452—459, 75 S.Ct. 489, 490—494, 496—500, 99 L.Ed. 510. But the Court has a 'clear' and contrary conclusion emerge from the 'somewhat,' to say the least, 'cloudy and confusing legislative history.' This is more than can be fairly asked even from the alchemy of construction. Since the Court relies on a few isolated statements in the legislative history which do not support its conclusion, however favoringly read, I have deemed in necessary to set forth in an appendix the entire relevant legislative history of the Taft-Hartley Act and its predecessor, the Case Bill. This legislative history reinforces the natural meaning of the statute as an exclusively procedural provision, affording, that is, an accessible federal forum for suits on agreements between labor organizations and employers, but not enacting federal law for such suits. See also Wollett and Wllington, Federalism and Breach of the Labor Agreement, 7 Stan.L.Rev. 445.
I have also set forth in my opinion in the Westinghouse case an outline of the vast problems that the Court's present decision creates by bringing into conflict state law and federal law, state courts and federal courts. 348 U.S. at pages 454—455, 75 S.Ct. at pages 497—498; see also Judge Wyzanski's opinion in Textile Workers Union of America (C.I.O.) v. American Thread Co., D.C., 113 F.Supp. 137, 140. These problems are not rendered non-existent by disregard of them. It should also be noted that whatever may be a union's ad hoc benefit in a particular case, the meaning of collective bargaining for labor does not remotely derive from reliance on the sanction of litigation in the courts. Restrictions made by legislation like the Clayton Act of 1914, 38 Stat. 738, §§ 20, 22, 29 U.S.C.A. § 52, 18 U.S.C.A. § 402, and the Norris-LaGuardia Act of 1932, 47 Stat. 70, 29 U.S.C.A. § 101 et seq., upon the use of familiar remedies theretofore available in the federal courts, reflected deep fears of the labor movement of the use of such remedies against labor. But a union, like any other combatant engaged in a particular fight, is ready to make an ally of an old enemy, and so we also find unions resorting to the otherwise much excoriated labor injunction. Such intermittent yielding to expediency does not change the fact that judicial intervention is ill-suited to the special characteristics of the arbitration process in labor disputes; nor are the conditions for its effective functioning thereby altered.
'The arbitration is an integral part of the system of self-government. And the system is designed to aid management in its quest for efficiency, to assist union leadership in its participation in the enterprise, and to secure justice for the employees. it is a means of making collective bargaining work and thus preserving private enterprise in a free government. When it works fairly well, it does not need the sanction of the law of contracts or the law of arbitration. It is only when the system breaks down completely that the courts' aid in these respects is invoked. But the courts cannot, by occasional sporadic decision, restore the parties' continuing relationship; and their intervention in such cases may seriously affect the going systems of self-government. When their autonomous system breaks down, might not the parties better be left to the usual methods for adjustment of labor disputes rather than to court actions on the contract or on the arbitration award?' Shulman, Reason, Contract, and Law in Labor Relations, 68 Harv.L.Rev. 999, 1024.
These reflections summarized the vast and extraordinarily successful experience of Dean Harry Shulman as labor arbitrator, especially as umpire under the collective-bargaining contract between the Ford Motor Co. and the UAW—CIO. (See his Opinions of the Umpire, Ford Motor Co. and UAW—CIO, 1943—1946, and the review by E. Merrick Dodd in 60 Harv.L.Rev. 486.) Arbitration agreements are for specific terms, generally much shorter than the time required for adjudication of a contested lawsuit through the available stages of trial and appeal. Renegotiation of agreements cannot await the outcome of such litigation; nor can the parties' continuing relation await it. Cases under § 301 will probably present unusual rather than representative situations. A 'rule' derived from them is more likely to discombobulate than to compose. A 'uniform corpus' cannot be expected to evolve, certainly not within a time to serve its assumed function.
The prickly and extensive problems that the supposed grant would create further counsel against a finding that the grant was made. They present hazardous opportunities for friction in the regulation of contracts between employers and unions. They involve the division of power between State and Nation, between state courts and federal courts, including the effective functioning of this Court. Wisdom suggests self-restraint in undertaking to solve these problems unless the Court is clearly directed to do so. Section 301 is not such a direction. The legislative history contains no suggestion that these problems were considered; the terms of the section do not present them.
One word more remains to be said. The earliest declaration of unconstitutionality of an act of Congress—by the Justices on circuit—involved a refusal by the Justices to perform a function imposed upon them by Congress because of the non-judicial nature of that function. Hayburn's Case, 2 Dall. 409, 1 L.Ed. 436. Since then, the Court has many times declared legislation unconstitutional because it imposed on the Court powers or functions that were regarded as outside the scope of the 'judicial power' lodged in the Court by the Constitution. See, e.g., Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 2 L.Ed. 60; United States v. Ferreira, 13 How. 40, 14 L.Ed. 42; Muskrat v. United States, 219 U.S. 346, 31 S.Ct. 250, 55 L.Ed. 246; Keller v. Potomac Electric Power Co., 261 U.S. 428, 43 S.Ct. 445, 67 L.Ed. 731.
One may fairly generalize from these instances that the Court has deemed itself peculiarly qualified, with due regard to the contrary judgment of Congress, to determine what is meet and fit for the exercise of 'judicial power' as authorized by the Constitution. Solicitude and respect for the confines of 'judicial power,' and the difficult problem of marking those confines, apply equally in construing precisely what duties Congress has cast upon the federal courts, especially when, as in this case, the most that can be said in support of finding a congressional desire to impose these 'legislative' duties on the federal courts is that Congress did not mention the problem in the statute and that, insofar as purpose may be gathered from congressional reports and debates, they leave us in the dark.
The Court, however, sees no problem of 'judicial power' in casting upon the federal courts, with no guides except 'judicial inventiveness,' the task of applying a whole industrial code that is as yet in the bosom of the jidiciary. There are severe limits on 'judicial inventiveness' even for the most imaginative judges. The law is not a 'brooding omnipresence in the sky,' (Mr. Justice Holmes, dissenting, in Southern Pacific Co. v. Jensen, 244 U.S. 205, 222, 37 S.Ct. 524, 531, 61 L.Ed. 1086), and it cannot be drawn from there like nitrogen from the air. These problems created by the Court's interpretation of § 301 cannot 'be solved by resort to the established canons of construction that enable a court to look through awkward or clumsy expression, or language wanting in precision, to the intent of the legislature. For the vice of the statute here lies in the impossibility of ascertaining, by any reasonable test, that the legislature meant one thing rather than another * * *.' Connally v. General Construction Co., 269 U.S. 385, 394, 46 S.Ct. 126, 128, 70 L.Ed. 322. But the Court makes § 301 a mountain instead of a molehill and, by giving an example of 'judicial inventiveness,' it thereby solves all the constitutional problems that would otherwise have to be faced.
Even on the Court's attribution to § 301 of a direction to the federal courts to fashion, out of bits and pieces elsewhere to be gathered, a federal common law of labor contracts, it still does not follow that Congress has enacted that an agreement to arbitrate industrial differences be specifically enforceable in the federal courts. On the contrary, the body of relevant federal law precludes such enforcement of arbitration clauses in collective-bargaining agreements.
Prior to 1925, the doctrine that executory agreements to arbitrate any kind of dispute would not be specifically enforced still held sway in the federal courts. See, e.g., Judge Hough's opinion in United States Asphalt Refining Co. v. Trinidad Lake Petroleum Co., D.C., 222 F. 1006; Judge Mack's opinion in Atlantic Fruit Co. v. Red Cross Line, D.C., 276 F. 319; and Mr. Justice Brandeis' opinion in Red Cross Line v. Atlantic Fruit Co., 264 U.S. 109, 123, 125, 44 S.Ct. 274, 276, 277, 68 L.Ed. 582. Legislation was deemed necessary to assure such power to the federal courts. In 1925, Congress passed the United States Arbitration Act, 9 U.S.C. § 1 et seq., 9 U.S.C.A. § 1 et seq., making executory agreements to arbitrate specifically enforceable in the federal courts, but explicitly excluding 'contracts of employment' of workers engaged in interstate commerce from its scope. Naturally enough, I find rejection, though not explicit, of the availability of the Federal Arbitration Act to enforce arbitration clauses in collective-bargaining agreements in the silent treatment given that Act by the Court's opinion. If an Act that authorizes the federal courts to enforce arbitration provisions in contracts generally, but specifically denies authority to decree that remedy for 'contracts of employment,' were available, the Court would hardly spin such power out of the empty darkness of § 301. I would make this rejection explicit, recognizing that when Congress passed legislation to enable arbitration agreements to be enforced by the federal courts, it saw fit to exclude this remedy with respect to labor contracts. See Amalgamated Association, etc. v. Pennsylvania Greyhound Lines, 3 Cir., 192 F.2d 310; United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America v. Miller Metal Products, Inc., 4 Cir., 215 F.2d 221; Lincoln Mills of Alabama v. Textile Workers Union, 5 Cir., 230 F.2d 81; United Steelworkers of America, C.I.O. v. Galland-Henning Mfg. Co., 7 Cir., 241 F.2d 323; and the legislative history set forth by the parties in the present cases. Congress heeded the resistance of organized labor, uncompromisingly led in its hostility to this measure by Andrew Furuseth, president of the International Seamen's Union and most powerful voice expressing labor's fear of the use of this remedy against it.2
Even though the Court glaringly ignores the Arbitration Act, it does at least recognize the common-law rule against enforcement of executory agreements to arbitrate. It nevertheless enforces the arbitration clause in the collective-bargaining agreements in these cases. It does so because it finds that Congress 'by implication' rejected the common-law rule. I would add that the Court, in thus deriving power from the unrevealing words of the Taft-Hartley Act, has also found that Congress 'by implication' repealed its own statutory exemption of collective-bargaining agreements in the Arbitration Act, an exemption made as we have seen for well-defined reasons of policy.
The Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, which reached the conclusion that arbitration clauses in collective-bargaining agreements were enforceable under the Arbitration Act, nevertheless found that such clauses would not have been enforceable by virtue of § 301:
'A number of courts have held that § 301 itself is a legislative authorization for decrees of specific performance of arbitration agreements. * * * We think that is reading too much into the very general language of § 301. The terms and legislative history of § 301 sufficiently demonstrate, in our view, that it was not intended either to create any new remedies or to deny applicable existing remedies. See H.R.Rep.No.245, 80th Cong., 1st Sess. 46 (1947); H.R.Rep.No.510 (Conference Report), 80th Cong., 1st Sess. 42 (1947); 93 Cong.Rec. 3734, 6540 (daily ed. 1947). Arbitration was scarcely mentioned at all in the legislative history. Furthermore, the same practical consideration that militates against judicial overruling of the common law doctrine applies against interpreting § 301 to give that effect. The most that could be read into it would be that it authorizes equitable remedies in general, including decrees for specific performance of an arbitration agreement. Lacking are the procedural specifications needed for administration of the power to compel arbitration. * * * Thus it seems to us that a firmer statutory basis than § 301 should be found to justify departure from the judicially formulated doctrines with reference to arbitration agreements.' Local 205, United Electrical, Radio and Mach. Workers of America (UE) v. General Electric Co., 233 F.2d 85, 96—97.
I would put the conclusion even more strongly because, contrary to the view of the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, the rule that is departed from 'by implication' had not only been 'judicially formulated' but had purposefully been congressionally formulated in the Arbitration Act of 1925. And it is being departed from on the tenuous basis of the legislative history of § 301, for which the utmost that can be claimed is that insofar as there was any expectation at all, it was only that conventional remedies, including equitable remedies, would be available. But of course, as we have seen, 'equitable remedies' in the federal courts had traditionally excluded specific performance of arbitration clauses, except as explicitly provided by the 1925 Act. Thus, even assuming that § 301 contains directions for some federal substantive law of labor contracts, I see no justification for translating the vague expectation concerning the remedies to be applied into an overruling of previous federal common law and, more particularly, into the repeal of the previous congressional exemption of collective-bargaining agreements from the class of agreements in which arbitration clauses were to be enforced.
The second ground of my dissent from the Court's action is more fundamental.3 Since I do not agree with the Court's conclusion that federal substantive law is to govern in actions under § 301, I am forced to consider the serious constitutional question that was adumbrated in the Westinghouse case, 348 U.S. at 449—452, 75 S.Ct. 494—496, the constitutionality of a grant of jurisdiction to federal courts over contracts that came into being entirely by virtue of state substantive law, a jurisdiction not based on diversity of citizenship, yet one in which a federal court would, as in diversity cases, act in effect merely as another court of the State in which it sits. The scope of allowable federal judicial power that this grant must satisfy is constitutionally described as 'Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority.' Art. III, § 2. While interpretive decisions are legion under general statutory grants of jurisdiction strikingly similar to this constitutional wording, it is generally recognized that the full constitutional power has not been exhausted by these statutes. See, e.g., Mishkin, The Federal 'Question' in the District Courts, 53 Col.L.Rev. 157, 160; Shulman and Jaegerman, Some Jurisdictional Limitations on Federal Procedure, 45 Yale L.J. 393, 405, n. 47; Wechsler, Federal Jurisdiction and the Revision of the Judicial Code, 13 Law & Contemp. Prob., 216, 224—225.
Almost without exception, decisions under the general statutory grants have tested jurisdiction in terms of the presence, as an integral part of plaintiff's cause of action, of an issue calling for interpretation or application of federal law. E.g., Gully v. First National Bank, 299 U.S. 109, 57 S.Ct. 96, 81 L.Ed. 70. Although it has sometimes been suggested that the 'cause of action' must derive from federal law, see American Well Works Co. v. Layne and Bowler Co., 241 U.S. 257, 260, 36 S.Ct. 585, 586, 60 L.Ed. 987, it has been found sufficient that some aspect of federal law is essential to plaintiff's success. Smith v. Kansas City Title & Trust Co., 255 U.S. 180, 41 S.Ct. 243, 65 L.Ed. 577. The litigation-provoking problem has been the degree to which federal law must be in the forefront of the case and not collateral, peripheral or remote.
In a few exceptional cases, arising under special jurisdictional grants, the criteria by which the prominence of the federal question is measured against constitutional requirements have been found satisfied under circumstances suggesting a variant theory of the nature of these requirements. The first, and the leading case in the field, is Osborn v. Bank of United States, 9 Wheat. 738, 6 L.Ed. 204. There, Chief Justice Marshall sustained federal jurisdiction in a situation—hypothetical in the case before him but presented by the companion case of Bank of United States v. Planters' Bank, 9 Wheat. 904, 6 L.Ed. 244—involving suit by a federally incorporated bank upon a contract. Despite the assumption that the cause of action and the interpretation of the contract would be governed by state law, the case was found to 'arise under the laws of the United States' because the propriety and scope of a federally granted authority to enter into contracts and to litigate might well be challenged. This reasoning was subsequently applied to sustain jurisdiction in actions against federally chartered railroad corporations. Pacific Railroad Removal Cases (Union Pac. Ry. Co. v. Myers), 115 U.S. 1, 5 S.Ct. 1113, 29 L.Ed. 319. The traditional interpretation of this series of cases is that federal jurisdiction under the 'arising' clause of the Constitution, though limited to cases involving potential federal questions, has such flexibility that Congress may confer it whenever there exists in the background some federal proposition that might be challenged, despite the remoteness of the likelihood of actual presentation of such a federal question.4
The views expressed in Osborn and the Pacific Railroad Removal Cases were severely restricted in construing general grants of jurisdiction. But the Court later sustained this jurisdictional section of the Bankruptcy Act of 1898:
'The United States district courts shall have jurisdiction of all controversies at law and in equity, as distinguished from proceedings in bankruptcy, between trustees as such and adverse claimants concerning the property acquired or claimed by the trustees, in the same manner and to the same extent only as though bankruptcy proceedings had not been instituted and such controversies had been between the bankrupts and such adverse claimants.' § 23, sub. a, as amended, 44 Stat. 664, 11 U.S.C.A. § 46, sub. a.
Under this provision the trustee could pursue in a federal court a private cause of action arising under and wholly governed by state law. Schumacher v. Beeler, 293 U.S. 367, 55 S.Ct. 230, 79 L.Ed. 433; Williams v. Austrian, 331 U.S. 642, 67 S.Ct. 1443, 91 L.Ed. 1718 (Chandler Act of 1938, 52 Stat. 840, 11 U.S.C.A. § 1 et seq.). To be sure, the cases did not discuss the basis of jurisdiction. It has been suggested that they merely represent an extension of the approach of the Osborn case; the trustee's right to sue might be challenged on obviously federal grounds—absence of bankruptcy or irregularity of the trustee's appointment or of the bankruptcy proceedings. National Mutual Ins. Co. of Dist. of Col. v. Tidewater Transfer Co., 337 U.S. 582, 611—613, 69 S.Ct. 1173, 1187—1188, 93 L.Ed. 1556 (Rutledge, J., concurring). So viewed, this type of litigation implicates a potential federal question.
Apparently relying on the extent to which the bankruptcy cases involve only remotely a federal question, Mr. Justice Jackson concluded in National Mutual Insurance Co. of Dist. of Col. v. Tidewater Transfer Co., 337 U.S. 582, 69 S.Ct. 1173, 93 L.Ed. 1556, that Congress may confer jurisdiction on the District Courts as incidental to its powers under Article I. No attempt was made to reconcile this view with the restrictions of Article III; a majority of the Court recognized that Article III defined the bounds of valid jurisdictional legislation and rejected the notion that jurisdictional grants can go outside these limits.
With this background, many theories have been proposed to sustain the constitutional validity of § 301. In Textile Workers Union of America (C.I.O.) v. American Thread Co., D.C., 113 F.Supp. 137, 140, Judge Wyzanski suggested, among other possibilities, that § 301 might be read as containing a direction that controversies affecting interstate commerce should be governed by federal law incorporating state law by reference, and that such controversies would then arise under a valid federal law as required by Article III. Whatever may be said of the assumption regarding the validity of federal jurisdiction under an affirmative declaration by Congress that state law should be applied as federal law by federal courts to contract disputes affecting commerce, we cannot argumentatively legislate for Congress when Congress has failed to legislate. To do so disrespects legislative responsibility and disregards judicial limitations.
Another theory, relying on Osborn and the bankruptcy cases, has been proposed which would achieve results similar to those attainable under Mr. Justice Jackson's view, but which purports to respect the 'arising' clause of Article III. See Hart and Wechsler, The Federal Courts and the Federal System, pp. 744—747; Wechsler, Federal Jurisdiction and the Revision of the Judicial Code, 13 Law & Contemp.Prob. 216, 224—225; International Brotherhood of Teamsters, etc. v. W. L. Mead, Inc., 1 Cir., 230 F.2d 576. Called 'protective jurisdiction,' the suggestion is that in any case for which Congress has the constitutional power to prescribe federal rules of decision and thus confer 'true' federal question jurisdiction, it may, without so doing, enact a jurisdictional statute, which will provide a federal forum for the application of state statute and decisional law. Analysis of the 'protective jurisdiction' theory might also be attempted in terms of the language of Article III—construing 'laws' to include jurisdictional statutes where Congress could have legislated substantively in a field. This is but another way of saying that because Congress could have legislated substantively and thereby could give rise to litigation under a statute of the United States, it can provide a federal forum for statecreated rights although it chose not to adopt state law as federal law or to originate federal rights.
Surely the truly technical restrictions of Article III are not met or respected by a beguiling phrase that the greater power here must necessarily include the lesser. In the compromise of federal and state interests leading to distribution of jealously guarded judicial power in a federal system, see 13 Cornell L.Q. 499, it is obvious that very different considerations apply to cases involving questions of federal law and those turning solely on state law. It may be that the ambiguity of the phrase 'arising under the laws of the United States' leaves room for more than traditional theory could accommodate. But, under the theory of 'protective jurisdiction,' the 'arising under' jurisdiction of the federal courts would be vastly extended. For example, every contract or tort arising out of a contract affecting commerce might be a potential cause of action in the federal courts, even though only state law was involved in the decision of the case. At least in Osborn and the bankruptcy cases, a substantive federal law was present somewhere in the background. See 353 U.S. 470—472, 77 S.Ct. 928, 929, supra, and 353 U.S. 480—484, 77 S.Ct. 933—936, infra. But this theory rests on the supposition that Congress could enact substantive federal law to govern the particular case. It was not held in those cases, nor is it clear, that federal law could be held to govern the transactions of all persons who subsequently become bankrupt, or of all suits of a Bank of the United States. See Mishkin, The Federal 'Question' in the District Courts, 53 Col.L.Rev. 157, 189.
'Protective jurisdiction,' once the label is discarded, cannot be justified under any view of the allowable scope to be given to Article III. 'Protective jurisdiction' is a misused label for the statute we are here considering. That rubric is properly descriptive of safeguarding some of the indisputable, staple business of the federal courts. It is a radiation of an existing jurisdiction. See Adams v. United States ex rel. McCann, 371 U.S. 269, 63 S.Ct. 236, 87 L.Ed. 268; 28 U.S.C. § 2283, 28 U.S.C.A. § 2283. 'Protective jurisdiction' cannot generate an independent source for adjudication outside of the Article III sanctions and what Congress has defined. The theory must have as its sole justification a belief in the inadequacy of state tribunals in determining state law. The Constitution reflects such a belief in the specific situation within which the Diversity Clause was confined. The intention to remedy such supposed defects was exhausted in this provision of Article III.5 That this 'protective' theory was not adopted by Chief Justice Marshall at a time when conditions might have presented more substantial justification strongly suggests its lack of constitutional merit. Moreover, Congress in its consideration of § 301 nowhere suggested dissatisfaction with the ability of state courts to administer state law properly. Its concern was to provide access to the federal courts for easier enforcement of state-created rights.
Another theory also relies on Osborn and the bankruptcy cases as an implicit recognition of the propriety of the exercise of some sort of 'protective jurisdiction' by the federal courts. Mishkin, op. cit. supra, 53 Col.L.Rev. 157, 184 et seq. Professor Mishkin tends to view the assertion of such a jurisdiction, in the absence of any exercise of substantive powers, as irreconcilable with the 'arising' clause since the case would then arise only under the jurisdictional statute itself, and he is reluctant to find a constitutional basis for the grant of power outside Article III. Professor Mishkin also notes that the only purpose of such a statute would be to insure impartiality to some litigant, an objection inconsistent with Article III's recognition of 'protective jurisdiction' only in the specified situation of diverse citizenship. But where Congress has 'an articulated and active federal policy regulating a field, the 'arising under' clause of Article III apparently permits the conferring of jurisdiction on the national courts of all cases in the area including those substantively governed by state law.' Id., at 192. In such cases, the protection being offered is not to the suitor, as in diversity cases, but to the 'congressional legislative program.' Thus he supports § 301: 'even though the rules governing collective bargaining agreements continue to be state-fashioned, nonetheless the mode of their application and enforcement may play a very substantial part in the labor-management relations of interstate industry and commerce—an area in which the national government has labored long and hard.' Id., at 196.
Insofar as state law governs the case, Professor Mishkin's theory is quite similar to that advanced by Professors Hart and Wechsler and followed by the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit: The substantive power of Congress, although not exercised to govern the particular 'case,' gives 'arising under' jurisdiction to the federal courts despite governing state law. The second 'protective jurisdiction' theory has the dubious advantage of limiting incursions on state judicial power to situations in which the State's feelings may have been tempered by early substantive federal invasions.
Professor Mishkin's theory of 'protective jurisdiction' may find more constitutional justification if there is not merely an 'articulated and active' congressional policy regulating the labor field but also federal rights existing in the interstices of actions under § 301. See Wollett and Wellington, Federalism and Breach of the Labor Agreement, 7 Stan.L.Rev. 445, 475—479. Therefore, before resting on an interpretation of § 301 that would compel a declaration of unconstitutionality, we must, as was stated in Westinghouse, defer to the strong presumption even as to such technical matters as federal jurisdiction—that Congress legislated in accordance with the Constitution. The difficult nature of the problem of construct