Opinion ID: 465022
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: constitutional objections to the committee's exercise of the subpoena power

Text: 47 Appellants contend that the Committee's subpoenas cannot be enforced because the subpoena provisions of the Act, and many of the Act's other features as well, violate the constitutional scheme of separation of powers and other constitutional principles. 48 Judge Hastings raised similar issues in a lawsuit he instituted in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia to enjoin the Committee's investigation on constitutional grounds. The district court in Hastings v. Judicial Conference of the United States, 593 F.Supp. 1371 (D.D.C.1984), upheld the constitutionality of the Act and dismissed Judge Hastings' complaint. Last summer, however, the District of Columbia Circuit, in Hastings v. Judicial Conference of the United States, 770 F.2d 1093 (D.C.Cir.1985), vacated the district court's judgment and remanded for dismissal without prejudice. It ruled that the district court's adjudication of the facial constitutionality of the Act was premature because the Committee's then-inchoate proceedings had not yet advanced to the stage where ripe constitutional issues would be presented with adequate development of the facts. 49 After the District of Columbia Circuit handed down its opinion, we directed the parties to file supplemental briefs discussing the extent to which, in light of the District of Columbia Circuit's reasoning, it would be proper for us to address the same constitutional issues in these subpoena enforcement proceedings. In addition to these supplemental briefs, the parties have tendered to us copies of their briefs filed in the District of Columbia Circuit. The United States has also intervened and filed its own brief in support of the Act's constitutionality. 50 As the foregoing account suggests, we now face a plethora of constitutional and related procedural issues. Not only is the constitutionality of the Act itself attacked in all its aspects, but because appellants are merely subpoenaed witnesses and not the subject of the investigation, there is the question of their standing to launch such attacks, as well as further questions concerning whether it is still premature to address some of the constitutional issues. 51 In Section A, below, we address appellants' standing, concluding that they do have standing to challenge the Act's constitutionality on some grounds. 52 In Section B, we deal with the various constitutional claims, disposing of some of them in favor of the Act and declining to address certain others because premature, because not amenable to resolution in a suit brought by subpoenaed witnesses, or for other reasons.
53 The United States contends that since the appellants are mere subpoenaed witnesses they lack standing to challenge the constitutionality of the Act. The government points out that Judge Hastings himself is not a party to the original subpoena enforcement proceedings; his motion to intervene in those proceedings, filed on September 25, 1985, three months after oral argument, was denied by us as untimely. While Judge Hastings is a party to the appeal from the district court, he has expressly declined to press the constitutional claims raised before the district court. The government insists, therefore, that the only parties raising constitutional claims--the subpoenaed witnesses--have not demonstrated the distinct and palpable injury to themselves that must be present or threatened under Article III for this court to exercise its powers of adjudication. 54 In support of the above argument the government relies upon Blair v. United States, 250 U.S. 273, 39 S.Ct. 468, 63 L.Ed. 979 (1919), and related cases. In Blair the Supreme Court held that witnesses subpoenaed by a grand jury investigating alleged violations of the Federal Corrupt Practices Act could not refuse to testify or produce documents on the ground that the Act was unconstitutional. The Court found that the witnesses lacked standing to press that claim, reasoning, 55 Considerations of propriety, as well as long-established practice, demand that we refrain from passing upon the constitutionality of an act of Congress unless obliged to do so in the proper performance of our judicial function, when the question is raised by a party whose interests entitle him to raise it. 56 We do not think the present parties are so entitled, since a brief consideration of the relation of a witness to the proceeding in which he is called will suffice to show that he is not interested to challenge the jurisdiction of court or grand jury over the subject-matter that is under inquiry. 57