Court Opinion

ID: 9417508
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 20:20:51.169572+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:21:44.513436
License: Public Domain

*20Mb. Justice Miller
(with, whom concurred
Mr. Justice Field) dissenting.
I find myself unable to concur with the majority of the court in the construction given by it, in the opinion just read, to the provisions of the act of March 3, 1887. This act was evidently intended to confer a new and important jurisdiction upon the Court of Claims, and a concurrent jurisdiction to a limited eitent, in the same class of cases, upon the Circuit and District Courts of the United States. I can see no other possible object in that part of the statute which confers this new jurisdiction by the use of language which for the first time in the history of that court authorizes it to take cognizance of claims where the party would be entitled to redress, .against the United States either in a court of law, equity or admiralty, if the United States were suable, than to make them suable in such cases. To hold that the distinct grant of power here provided for is controlled by the fact that this court has under former statutes decided that it did not then exist, is simply to nullify this new grant of power.
The manifest purpose of this new act was to confer power which the Court of . Claims did not previously have, and to authorize it to take jurisdiction of a class of cases of which it had not cognizance before. To say that under such- circumstances the new statute is to be crippled and rendered ineffectual in the only new feature which it has, in regard to the jurisdiction of that court, is in my mind a refusal to obey the law as made by Congress in the matter in which its power is undisputed.
It is clear to me that Congress intended by this act to enlarge very materially the right of suit against the United States, to facilitate this right by allowing suits to be brought in the Circuit and District Courts where the parties resided, and that it also designed to enlarge the remedy in the Court of Claims to meet all such cases in law, equity, and admiralty, against the United States, as would be cognizable in such courts against individuals.
I am authorized to say that Mr. Justice Field agrees with me in this dissent.