Court Opinion

ID: 9857573
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 15:43:49.400708+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:50:20.660632
License: Public Domain

DENNIS J. STEWART, Bankruptcy Judge.
I wish to join Judge Pelofsky in his holding that Rule 5002 of the Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure is unconstitutional and unlawful insofar as it goes beyond the disqualification statute, section 455, Title 28, United States Code, in defining situations where the bankruptcy judge, as a matter of law, regardless of the factual context, must, in effect, recuse himself from appointing officers of the bankruptcy estate.
I
The principal effect of the rule betrays its chief vice. That principal effect is to prohibit the bankruptcy court from making judicial factual determinations which can be essential and crucial in the administration of bankruptcy estates. While the manner of making proof of facts in disqualification proceedings is often carefully controlled, it ordinarily remains for the judge to draw the proper inferences and make findings as to the ultimate material facts, determining in the process whether “a reasonable person with knowledge of all the facts would conclude that the judge’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” United States v. Winston, 613 F.2d 221, 222 (9th Cir.1980). The prohibition against the bankruptcy judge’s doing so in respect of “associates” of persons ineligible to serve as officers of the estate is thus another significant detraction from the independence of the bankruptcy judiciary which is already reeling from a myriad of blows lately addressed to that same vital aspect of its system. It was foreseen with the passage of the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 1978 that the sitting bankruptcy judges were likely to be perceived as responsible for its provisions and punished accordingly. Thus, a congressional source has recorded among the history of that legislation that “(f)eeling ... is running high against bankruptcy judges for their role in the formulation of this legislation .. . (R)etaliation . . . would seriously impair the conduct of the bench during the early phases of the implementation of this new law. (But), toward the end of the transition period, patronage considerations may induce appointments of those who seek appointment to the new bench in preference to the sitting judges.” Sen.Rep. No. 95-989, 1978 U.S.Code Cong, and Adm.News, p. 6415. True to this prophecy, bankruptcy judges of long and distinguished standing have been subjected to reviews by screening panels whose findings and recommendations are required neither to be based on verified facts nor rendered after the according of due process. The salaries of bankruptcy judges have been considered anything except free from tampering and are now said to be entirely evanescent, on the verge of complete disappearance. And their power to make factual determinations of issues arising under state law, even when the parties consent to bankruptcy court jurisdiction, has. been impugned. See 1616 Reminc Limited Partnership v. Atchison and Keller Ltd. Partnership, 704 F.2d 1313 (4th Cir.1983). The result has been the foreseen and apparently desired one, that of attrition of the best and brightest of the bankruptcy bench, their “judicial flight,” as it is now commonly termed, to better paying and more secure positions. Yet, under the law of the land as it has been with some frequency asseverated, whatever the personal rights of bankruptcy judges and without regard to the correctness of the particular contentions which they have been and are advancing, they were only doing their public duty in attempting to further their independence by casting off the yoke of the many dependencies which had developed and augmented over the years. “In the light of (time honored and never discredited) views ... it is not extravagant to say that there rests upon every federal judge affected nothing less than a duty to withstand any attempt, directly or indirectly in contravention of the Constitution, to diminish his compensation (or other trapping of independence), not for his private advan*491tage — which, if that were all, he might be willing to forego — but in the interest of preserving unimpaired an essential safeguard adopted as a continuing guaranty of an independent judicial administration for the benefit of the whole people.” O’Donoghue v. United States, 289 U.S. 516, 533, 53 S.Ct. 740, 744, 77 L.Ed. 1356 (1933). Now, however, the imposition of Rule 5002 may be the crudest blow of all, purporting, as it does, to come from within, and requiring the bankruptcy judge, whenever its applicability comes into focus, to make findings which may or may not be justified by the particular circumstances, and always against his own integrity, not only as a factfinder, but in the deepest moral sense as well. The assurance that bankruptcy judges, trustees, and other officers of the estate can faithfully and honestly administer estates is lessened, rather than promoted, by a rule so broad that it must necessarily defeat its own purposes. In fact, such faithful and honest administration is made almost impossible, for every case must now be processed against the dread that sometime, somehow, and even retrospectively, its handling will be challenged on the basis of a remote connection between the trustee and a judge of the bankcourt which was not perceived at the time of the former’s appointment. As the superficial and tangential in a trustee’s qualifications become material, there is a likelihood that the material will come to be considered as superficial and tangential. With the reduction of the pool of able trustees by the number of those with perceived remote connections with the court, the probability that those with real impediments will have to be pressed into service by accident, need, or otherwise, increases. And, again, the result must be a further reduction in the strength, numerical and otherwise, of the bankruptcy bench.
If this rule were imposed upon an Article III court, there can be little doubt that it would be invalidated as an unconstitutional infringement of judicial independence. It is commonly held that the legislative branch of government, for all its power to dictate substantive and procedural law to the Article III judiciary, cannot dictate how a court should determine genuine issues of material fact. “(O)nce Congress confers jurisdiction to try a case, it cannot withhold power to decide the case according to the applicable law.” Payne v. Griffin, 51 F.Supp. 588, 591 (M.D.Ga.1943). Thus, it was held by the Supreme Court of the United States in United States v. Klein, 80 U.S. (13 Wall.) 128, 20 L.Ed. 519 (1871), that for Congress to enact a statute compelling courts of the United States to draw factual inferences which could be justified neither by common reason and experience nor by the surrounding facts and circumstances was an unwarranted encroachment on the independence of the judiciary, required the case arbitrarily to be decided against a party to it, and “passed the limit which separates the legislative from the judicial power.”1 The rule *492of the Klein case has continued to be honored down to the present time.2 Its imperative appears to be so necessary to even minimal independence of any judiciary that it must also be held to apply to the bankruptcy court — despite its current lack of Article III character — so as to invalidate the portions of Rule 5002 which require the inference, in every case, that members of the same law firm as a relative of or “person connected” with a non-appointing member of the bankruptcy court cannot be anything but corruptly appointed by a member of the court.
In respect of non-Article-III legislative courts, it has sometimes been held that, because they adjudicate only “public rights,” a considerable degree of depreciation of their independence can be tolerated. It is said that this is so because there is no absolute right in law and justice for an individual to assert his claim against the government; that the government permits him to do so only as a matter of grace; and that, therefore, the absence of an altogether independent judiciary is something that must be accepted as part of the price of being granted to prosecute the claim *493against the government.3 But these facile considerations cannot apply to the bankruptcy courts which, according to the rule of Northern Pipeline Constr. Co. v. Marathon Pipe Line Co., 458 U.S. 50, 102 S.Ct. 2858, 2867, 73 L.Ed.2d 598 (1982), “Congress did not constitute ... as legislative courts,” and whose decisions, moreover, frequently constitute precedents on which the daily commercial life of the American people is based. To manipulate the decisions of a court having so much significance to common usages of common men and women would be to subvert and deflect an important source of lawgiving. And manipulation in almost any form of any significant judicial tribunal is wholly foreign to the legal traditions of the United States.4 If bankruptcy courts are to continue to be free to make the decisions which lie at the heart and soul of its public mission, the rule now under consideration cannot be allowed to stand to impose its full oppressive weight against the sitting bankruptcy judges.
It is recognized, of course, that the Klein decision and its progeny were based upon the separation of powers doctrine; that they were accordingly designed to safeguard the judiciary against legislative encroachments and that it may be arguable that the strictures of Rule 5002 are not legislative restrictions, but only supervision imposed by the judiciary itself.5 But it is acknowledged in virtually all the cases which deal with the question that there must necessarily be á limit to the judiciary’s own internal discipline.6 Whatever the co-*494^figuration of such limits, they are almost certainly transgressed by a rule which would virtually eradicate the court’s quintessential characteristic, that of a determiner of factual issues. The rulemakers themselves have elsewhere recognized the inalienability of this power of making factual determinations and drawing reasonable inferences from a court’s identity as a judicial body. See Rule 8013 of the Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure; In re Morrissey, 717 F.2d 100, 104, 105 (3d Cir.1983). But, in this respect, they have, while honoring the principle in general, nevertheless violated it in this one highly important particular; and, in that particular, Rule 5002, accordingly, cannot stand side by side with the paramount principle of judicial independence.
II
There is a second and independent reason why the rule, as applied to Mr. Rubin, must fail. As to him, who has been a member of the panel of trustees from its historical inception, its provisions would suddenly terminate his tenure as a member of that panel without any notice, opportunity for a hearing, or any evidence whatever of cause for such termination.6a It has been held, however, since Perry v. Sindermann, 408 U.S. 593, 92 S.Ct. 2694, 33 L.Ed.2d 570 (1972), that a public official with a reasonable expectancy of continued employment is as entitled to due process in connection with his discharge as an employee with the formal indicia of tenure. The only question which presents itself in this regard as having a semblance of significance is that of whether a member of the panel of trustees is the type of employee intended to be covered by this constitutional ruling. Formerly, in respect of a panel similarly created primarily for public service purposes,7 the panel of attorneys created under the Criminal Justice Act to supply legal assistance to indigent defendants in criminal cases, our district court held in Mee v. Becker, 456 F.Supp. 224,227 (W.D.Mo.1978), that the “Act ... is not intended as a full employment bill for attorneys”; that due process, accordingly, did not apply; and that an attorney, as a result, could lawfully be removed from the panel at any time, with or without cause, and without notice or opportunity of a hearing of any kind. Since that time, however, the rule of Perry v. Sindermann, supra, has been employed with increasing liberality to a broadening spectrum of classifications of public employees, some of whom have, in other contexts, not been regarded as public employees. As for trustees and receivers in bankruptcy, it was formerly held in Cromelin v. United States, 177 F.2d 275, 277 (5th Cir.1949), that neither a judge of the United States nor a trustee in bankruptcy were to be considered federal employees for purposes of the Federal Tort Claims Act. “The trustee, like a receiver, is an officer of court, appointed by the court, directed by the court, and paid by the court *495from the funds of the court. He is m no sense an agent or employee or officer of the United States. The judge is appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, and paid from the United States treasury, but in trying cases he is a member of the independent judiciary and is not under the control of the United States any more than a member of the legislative department in legislating.” In extending the rule of Perry v. Sindermann, supra, however, to include a right against dismissal of nonpolicy-making, nonconfidential public employees for political reasons, the Supreme Court, in Elrod v. Burns, 427 U.S. 347, 96 S.Ct. 2673, 49 L.Ed.2d 547 (1976), significantly broadened the scope of public employees to which constitutional protection of tenure applies. Subsequently, in Branti v. Finkel, 445 U.S. 507, 100 S.Ct. 1287, 63 L.Ed.2d 574 (1980), the Supreme Court extended the protection against unconstitutional dismissal to an assistant public defender, who, for other purposes, including that of official immunity, could not be said to be a public official. Ferri v. Ackerman, 444 U.S. 193, 100 S.Ct. 402, 62 L.Ed.2d 355 (1979). Presently, according to some holdings, even lower court judges and magistrates, once thought to be wholly at the mercy of their superiors once their limited tenure expired, are now enti-tied to due process as having an expectancy of reemployment by reason of any general practice of reappointing inferior judges and magistrates in the absence of any wrongdoing. Lewis v. Blackburn, 555 F.Supp. 713, 718, 721 (W.D.N.C.1983).8 In light of these decisions, it seems possible that Mee v. Becker, supra, might well be decided differently today than it was in 1978. Even if a trustee in bankruptcy, moreover, is to be considered at this time as an officer of the court — despite his receiving remuneration from the government in each case and despite his selection and retention by the Administrative Office of the United States Courts — it would seem that he is entitled to the constitutional protections outlined in the decisions mentioned above.9
Ill
Further, if it is public employment which the trustee, in virtually any sense, enjoys, then, even when there is no expectancy of continued employment or reemployment, it is constitutionally prohibited to discharge one from such public employment for the exercise of a constitutional right. Perry v. Sindermann, supra; Roth v. Board of Regents, 408 U.S. 564, 92 S.Ct. 2701, 33 L.Ed.2d 548 (1972). Application of Rule 5002 to Mr. Rubin purely and simply results *496in his discharge from the panel of trustees because of his professional association with Frank P. Barker III, who is the son of the chief judge of our bankruptcy court. It thus unconstitutionally penalizes the right to freedom of association guaranteed him by the. First Amendment to our Constitution. Nor can it reasonably be said that there is any countervailing and legitimate public interest which would justify suppression of that right, for it has not and cannot be shown that mere association, professional or otherwise, with a relative of a nonap-pointing judge necessarily means, without more, that the appointee will be more generously dealt with by the appointing judge than the law allows. No logic or experience, as Judge Pelofsky points out in his opinion, could justify such a finding, without additional facts relevant to particular cases.10
IV
Finally, the full scope of the situations in which a judge may not appoint a trustee or other officer of an estate in a case over which he is to preside is adequately and fully defined by section 455, Title 28, United States Code.11 In purporting to supplement that statute and extend it, the rule-makers have gone beyond their authority by adventuring into the realm of nonadjec-tival and substantive law and, to the extent they have done so, the rule is invalid.12
Because of these multifarious defects in Rule 5002, I concur in Judge Pelofsky’s conclusion that it is constitutionally invalid and unlawful as applied to Charles Elliott Rubin, Esquire. And, having held that the rule is invalid insofar as it prevents an associate of a relative of a nonappointing judge, regardless of the particular factual circumstances, from being appointed as an officer of the estate by another member of the court, it follows that the rule cannot stand as it applies to associates of other persons who, by reason of their connections with any judge, cannot be appointed by the court on which that judge sits.13

. The Klein case involved confiscation proceedings against property of former rebels in which the decisive issue was that of loyalty to the United States. “(I)t was the purpose of Congress that the proceeds of the property for which the special provision of the act was made, should go into the Treasury without change of ownership. Certainly such was the intention in respect to the property of loyal men. That the same intention prevailed in regard to the property of owners who, though then hostile, might subsequently become loyal, appears probable from the circumstances that no provision is anywhere made for the confiscation of it.” 80 U.S. at 138. The President of the United States issued pardons to some former rebels which had the effect of determining them to be loyal. The Congress, however, enacted a statute providing that any pardon accepted without protest could not be accepted as evidence of loyalty but, rather, must be accepted as conclusive evidence of disloyalty, both in the Court of Claims and on appeal. The Court of Claims nevertheless found for the claimant and, on appeal, the Supreme Court analyzed the matter as follows:
“The court is required to ascertain the existence of certain facts and thereupon to declare that its jurisdiction on appeal has ceased, by dismissing the bill. What is this but to prescribe a rule for the decision of a cause in a particular way? In the case before us, the court of claims has rendered judgment for the claimant and an appeal has been taken to this court. We are directed to dismiss the appeal, if we find that the judgment must be affirmed, because of a pardon granted to the intestate of the claimants. Can we do so without allowing that the legislature *492may prescribe rules of decision to the judicial department of the government in cases pending before it? ... . In the case before us no new circumstances have been created by legislation. But the court is forbidden to give the effect to evidence which, in its own judgment, such evidence should have, and is directed to give it an effect precisely contrary .... Congress has already provided that the Supreme Court shall have jurisdiction of the judgments of the court of claims on appeal. Can it prescribe a rule in conformity with which the court must deny to itself the jurisdiction thus conferred, because and only because its decision, in accordance with the settled law, must be adverse to the government and favorable to the suitor? The question seems to us to answer itself.”
80 U.S. at 146, 147. Seen from the standpoint of the litigant, this applied doctrine of the separation of pwoers is seen as the invocation of the due process standard under which the courts inquire as to whether the procedures to be employed are adequate to permit determination of the issue before a court or other adjudicative body. See, e.g., Bell v. Burson, 402 U.S. 535, 542, 91 S.Ct. 1586, 1591, 29 L.Ed.2d 90 (1971) (“(A) hearing which excludes consideration of an element essential to the decision ... does not meet this standard (of due process).”); Stanley v. Illinois, 405 U.S. 645, 657, 92 S.Ct. 1208, 1215, 31 L.Ed.2d 551 (1972) (“Procedure by presumption is always chéaper and easier than individualized determination. But when, as here, the procedure (by invoking a presumption that an unmarried father is an unfit parent) forecloses the determinative issues of competence and care, when it explicitly disdains present realities in deference to past formalities, it needlessly risks running roughshod over the important interests of both parent and child. It therefore cannot stand.”). But, in this matter, the rule of the Klein case has more certain and determinative applicability. It is conceivable, for instance, that a procedure employing an irrebuttable presumption could satisfy the due process standards and still violate the Klein rule simply because, as in this case, the legislative branch first conferred power to make the decision on the courts and then, in exercising its rulemaking power, dictated precisely how that decision should be made. Further, under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, the right to due process does not proceed ex vacuo, but rather, as the cases cited in the following section of the text make clear, must proceed from a liberty or property interest. Thus, in order to invoke the rule of Bell v. Burson, supra, and like cases, the party must demonstrate the existence of a property or liberty interest. Accordingly, while one may be entitled to due process as a matter of being terminated from a panel of trustees, he may not necessarily be entitled to such process as a prerequisite to not being included on such a panel or not being appointed as the officer of an estate. But the rule of Klein, under the separation of powers doctrine, can be invoked in either instance.

. United States v. Brainer, 691 F.2d 691, 695 (4th Cir.1982) (“We assume that the application- of existing law to the facts of a case properly before the courts is a judicial function which the legislature may not constitutionally usurp.”); California Medical Association v. Federal Election Commission, 641 F.2d 619, 638 (9th Cir.1980) (“There are . . . some limits on congressional authority over the judiciary; for example, Congress may not undermine the courts’ capacity to make independent determinations of questions of law and fact in particular cases .... See also United States v. Klein, 80 U.S. (Wall.) 128, 147, 20 L.Ed. 519 (1872) (statute compelling court to ignore certain evidence which court believed to be relevant “passed the limit which separates the legislative from the judicial power”).”; Memorial Hosp. v. Heckler, 706 F.2d 1130, 1137 (11th Cir.1983).

. “We find nothing which militates against the(se) . .. views in the requirement that the Court of claims ... in the provisions of the Tucker Act .. . requiring the court in cases brought against the government also to consider and decide set-offs and other claims made by the government against the petitioner and award judgment accordingly .... the latter is simply a provision which the claimant must accept as a condition upon which he may avail himself of the privilege of suing the government in the special court organized for that purpose.” Williams v. United States, 289 U.S. 553, 581, 53 S.Ct. 751, 760, 77 L.Ed. 1372 (1933). The Court so held, even though it recognized the undesirability of the lack of independence: “The sole function of the court being to decide between the government and private suitors, a condition, on the part of judges, of entire dependence upon the legislative pleasure for the tenure of their offices and for a continuance of adequate compensation during their service in office, to say the least, is not desirable.” 289 U.S. at 562, 53 S.Ct. at 753.

. “To date efforts to tamper with the federal judiciary have not been successful ... The States, of course, have mostly gone the other way. But as Prof. Kurland observed: ‘(T)he various devices that the States have recently adopted for policing their judiciaries are little more than polite blackmail, suggestions that the bar is unhappy with the judge’s behavior and he’d better shape up or else. I shudder to think how (easily) the federal courts might have been deprived of the services of Judge Learned Hand . .. For politeness to counsel and a willingness to tolerate fools gladly were not among his virtues, and it is only such virtues and that of regular attendance at the court house that the policing systems seem capable of evoking from timid judges.’ The way to achieve what is done today is by constitutional amendment .. . Manipulated judiciaries are common across the world, especially in communist and fascist nations. The faith in freedom which we profess ... is opposed to those ideologies ...” Palmore v. United States, 411 U.S. 389, 410, 420, 421, 93 S.Ct. 1670, 1682, 1687, 1688, 36 L.Ed.2d 342 (1973) (dissent of Douglas, J.).

. “Although Congress has generally delegated-to the judiciary the power to make rules governing judicial practice and procedure, the final authority for rulemaking rests ultimately with Congress.” California Medical Ass’n v. Federal Elec. Com’n, 641 F.2d 619, 638 (9th Cir.1980).

. “Whether the action taken by the Council with respect to the division of business in Judge Chandler’s district falls to one side or the other of the line defining the maximum permissible intervention consistent with the constitutional requirement of judicial independence is the ultimate question oh which review is sought in the petition now before us .... These questions have long been discussed and debated; they are not easy questions and the risks suggested by the dissents are not to be lightly cast aside. But for the reasons that follow, we do not find it necessary to answer them because the threshold question in this case is whether we have jurisdiction to entertain the petition for extraordinary relief.” Chandler v. Judicial Council of Tenth Circuit of U.S., 398 U.S. 74, 84, 85, 86, 90 S.Ct. 1648, 1653, 1654, 26 L.Ed.2d 100 (1970). “One of the great advances made in the structure of government by our Constitution was its provision for an independent judiciary — for judges who could do their duty as they saw it without having to accohnt to superior court judges or *494to any one else except the Senate sitting as a court of impeachment.” Chandler v. Judicial Council of Tenth Circuit of U.S., 382 U.S. 1003, 1004, 1005, 86 S.Ct. 610, 610, 611, 15 L.Ed.2d 494 (1966) (dissenting opinion of Black, J.).

. Because of Mr. Rubin’s having been on the panel of trustees, he should have the liberty and property interests necessary to bring the due process issue into focus. Others may not. In such cases, however, the rule of the Klein case has the broader applicability pointed up in note 1, supra. If due process is applicable, as Judge Pelofsky points out in his opinion, it is likely that the standards of Bell v. Burson, supra note 1, and Stanley v. Iiinois, supra note 1, require the court to condemn the presumption that association with a disqualified person must give rise to an equal cause for disqualification of the associate. But‘the preliminary questions are the status of Mr. Rubin as a public employee with a property or liberty interest, or both. Because of the dominant applicability of the Klein rule to this matter, as pointed out in note 1, supra, and its dictates as to the scope of the factfinding process, this court need not go further today and define all the elements of due process in every type of instance in which a member of the panel of trustees may be terminated from that panel.

. The element of public service, rather than private compensation, is still regarded as the principal hallmark of a trustee’s duty, or that of the other officers of a bankruptcy estate. In the process of administration, they are to remember that “(c)learly the purpose of the Bankruptcy Act was to benefit creditors and debtors, not trustees.” In re Kokoszka, 479 F.2d 990, 995, 996 (2d Cir.1973).

. It is elsewhere suggested in dicta that “if judicial office-holders have ... ‘legitimate claim of entitlement’ to preferential consideration of their petitions for reappointment by virtue of their incumbency,” they may have a “cognizable property interest in their positions after the expiration of their fixed terms.” Richardson v. Koshiba, 693 F.2d 911, 916 (9th Cir.1982).

. Although the concept was slow and uncertain in developing, and still may be open to some doubt, the status of a trustee as a public employee or official within this line of cases seems to have been adumbrated in 1980 with the decision in Branti v. Finkel, 445 U.S. 507, 517, n. 12, 100 S.Ct. 1287, 1294, n. 12, 63 L.Ed.2d 574 (1980), which noted that “(t)he compensation of government employees, like the distribution of other public benefits, must be justified by a governmental purpose.” Accordingly, it was held that that compensation should not be cut off in violation of the federal constitution. As a member of the panel of trustees, Mr. Rubin receives some compensation from the federal government. In this circuit, the precise contours of a “public employee” within the meaning of the Perry, Roth, and Elrod cases, were probably not filled in with any recognizable completeness until the decisions of our court of appeals in Sweeney v. Bond, 669 F.2d 542 (8th Cir.1982), and Fox and Company v. Schoemehl, 671 F.2d 303 (8th Cir.1982), when it was noted that payment by the government may not be the only determining factor; that some independent contractors paid in part by the government are not public employees; and that, additionally, there should be some governmental supervision of the daily operations or duties of a public employee. The members of the panel of trustees, in this district, are supervised by the clerk of the bankruptcy court. Thus, although, as Judge Pelofsky points out in his opinion, the statutory scheme of the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 1978 provides that a trustee may be removed from the panel only for cause, it was not until 1982 that it became clear that they may have been entitled to the full range of constitutional due process contemplated by the Perry and Roth decisions.

. “(A)ny classification which serves to penalize the exercise of (a constitutional right), unless shown to be necessary to promote a compelling governmental interest, is unconstitutional.” Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U.S. 618, 634, 89 S.Ct. 1322, 1331, 22 L.Ed.2d 600 (1969) (Emphasis in original.)

. Although there are other statutes which contain express prohibitions under special circumstances, section 455, in its broader scope, probably encompasses those and adds others under its supplementary “reasonable man” approach.

. “As a matter of elemental law, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (or other procedural rules) do not create substantive rights (nor subtract therefrom) . .. Substantive federal rights are grounded in the Constitution of the United States and laws enacted by Congress.” Weiner v. Bank of King of Prussia, 358 F.Supp. 684, 694 (E.D.Pa.1973).

. This invalidation is possible, even without a person before the court who can show the violation of a property or liberty interest, because of the application of the rule of the Klein case, as outlined in note 1, supra.