Court Opinion

ID: 9419405
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:49:20.659324+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:17.927973
License: Public Domain

By MR. Justice Jackson:
I concur with the opinion of the Ci-iief Justice.
If the Court were to reconsider Williams v. North Carolina, 317 U. S. 287, in the light of the views expressed by Mr. Justice Black, I should adhere to the views I expressed in dissent there. Until we do so, I consider myself bound by that decision. Whatever might be the law if that case had never been decided, I am unable to see why the controlling principles it announced under the full faith and credit clause to reverse the North Carolina decision therein do not require reversal of the Louisiana decision under review. I agree with the dissent that Louisiana has a legitimate interest to protect in the subject matter of this litigation, but so did North Carolina in the Williams case. I am unable to see how Louisiana can be constitutionally free to apply its own workmen’s compensation law to its citizens despite a previous adjudication in another state if North Carolina was not free to apply its own matrimonial policy to its own citizens after judgment on the subject in Nevada. Is Louisiana’s social interest in seeing that its labor contracts carry adequate workmen’s compensation superior constitutionally to North Carolina’s interest in seeing that people who contract marriage there are protected in the rights they acquire? It is true that someone might have to take care of the Louisiana citizen who is injured but inadequately compensated in Texas, as it was true in the Williams case that someone might have to care for those deprived of their marriage status by the foreign divorce decree.
*447Overruling a precedent always introduces some confusion and the necessity for it may be unfortunate. But it is as nothing to keeping on our books utterances to which we ourselves will give full faith and credit only if the outcome pleases us. I shall abide by the Williams case until it is taken off our books, and for that reason concur in the decision herein.