Court Opinion

ID: 9419752
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:51:22.168674+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:20.442162
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Frankfurter,
concurring.
The case lies within very narrow confines. The publication under scrutiny is a periodical. It is therefore entitled to the special rates accorded by Congress provided it is published “for the dissemination of information of a public character, or devoted to literature, the sciences, arts . . .” If it be devoted to “literature” it becomes unnecessary to consider how small an infusion of “information of a public character” entitles a periodical to the second-class mail rates when the bulk of its contents would not otherwise satisfy the Congressional conditions.
Congress has neither defined its conception of “literature” nor has it authorized the Postmaster General to do so. But it has placed a limitation upon what is to be deemed “literature” for a privilege which the Court rightly calls a form of subsidy. Matters that are declared nonmailable (Criminal Code § 211; 35 Stat. 1129,36 Stat. 1339; 18 U. S. C. § 334) are of course not “literature” within the scope of the second-class privilege. But the Postmaster General does not contend that the periodical with which we are concerned was nonmailable. He merely contends that it was not devoted to the kind of “literature” or “art” which may claim the subsidy of second-class matter. But since Congress has seen fit to allow “literature” conveyed by periodicals to have the second-class privilege without making any allowable classification of “literature,” except only that nonmailable matter as defined by § 211 of the Criminal Code is excluded, the *160area of “literature, the sciences, arts” includes all composition of words, pictorial representation,' or notations that are intelligible to any portion of the population, no matter whether their appeal is extensive or esoteric. Since the Postmaster General disavows the nonmailability of the issues of the periodical he had before him and since Congress did not qualify “literature, the sciences, arts” by any standards of taste or edification or public elevation, the Postmaster General exceeded his powers in denying this periodical a second-class permit.
It seems to me important strictly to confine discussion in this case because its radiations touch, on the one hand, the very basis of a free society, that of the right of expression beyond the conventions of the day,, and, on the other hand, the freedom of society from constitutional compulsion to subsidize enterprise, whether in the world of matter or of mind. While one may entirely agree with Mr. Justice Holmes, in Leach v. Carlile, 258 U. S. 138, 140, as to the extent to which the First Amendment forbids control of the post so far as sealed letters are concerned, one confronts an entirely different set of questions in considering the basis on which the Government may. grant or withheld subsidies through low postal rates, and huge subsidies, if one is to judge by the glimpse afforded by the present case. It will be time enough to consider such questions when the Court cannot escape decision upon them.