Court Opinion

ID: 9419791
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:51:31.349341+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:20.434385
License: Public Domain

Me. Justice Reed,
concurring.
I agree that the TVA has authority to condemn the tracts of land which the Authority seeks to acquire by these proceedings.
This authority flows from the power of eminent domain granted by §§ 4 and 25 of the Tennessee Valley Authority Act, 48 Stat. 58, as amended. The grant which allows condemnation of all property that the Authority “deems necessary for carrying out the purposes of this Act,” is in sufficiently broad terms, it seems to me, to justify these condemnations. When the Authority was faced with the problem of justly compensating the occupants of the forty-four thousand acre area between the Fontana Dam lake and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, North Carolina and Swain County for the destruction of Highway No. 288, it could within its delegated powers purchase or condemn the lands affected or build a substitute highway whichever appeared cheaper. The United States is not barred from the exercise of good business judgment in its construction work. Brown v. United States, 263 U. S. 78. See United States v. Meyer, 113 F. 2d 387; Old Dominion Land Co. v. United States, 296 F. 20, 269 U. S. 55, 66. Such action is not “outside land speculation.” 263 U. S. at 84. It follows that having this6 power, the Authority could contract, as it did, to reduce its expenditures *556by the contract arrangements of July 30,1943, with Swain County and North Carolina. With the Authority’s power to turn over its lands to the National Park, we are not here concerned. Under the contract the public rights in Highway No. 288 were acquired by the Authority and it agreed to acquire the lands here in controversy. The acquisition of the whole area was a factor in these arrangements and the condemnation of these smaller tracts is a part of the transaction.
I do not join in the opinion of the Court because of certain. language, ante, pp. 551-554, which implies to me that there is no judicial review of the Authority’s determination that acquisition of these isolated pieces of private property is within the purposes of the TVA Act. The Court seems to accept the Authority’s argument that a good faith determination by it that property is necessary for the purposes of the Act bars judicial review as to whether the proposed use will be within the statutory limits. This argument of lack of judicial power properly was rejected by the Circuit Court of Appeals although, as explained above, I think that court erroneously held that the TVA Act did not authorize these condemnations. 150 F. 2d 613, 616. It is my opinion that the TVA is a creature of its statute and bound by the terms of that statute, and that its every act may be tested judicially, by -any party with standing tó do so, to determine whether it moves within the authority granted to it by Congress. School of Magnetic Healing v. McAnnulty, 187 U. S. 94; Social Security Board v. Nierotko, 327 U. S. 358, 369.
This taking is for a public purpose but whether it is or is not is a judicial question. Of course, the legislative or administrative determination has great weight but the constitutional doctrine of the Separation of Powers would be unduly restricted if an administrative agency could invoke a so-called political power so as to immunize its action against judicial examination in contests between *557the agency and the citizen. The former cases go no further than this. United States v. Gettysburg Electric R. Co., 160 U. S. 668, 680; Rindge Co. v. Los Angeles, 262 U. S. 700, 709; Old Dominion Land Co. v. United States, 269 U. S. 55, 66; Cincinnati v. Vester, 281 U. S. 439, 446.
Once it is admitted or judicially determined that a proposed condemnation is for a public purpose and within the statutory authority, a political or judicially non-reviewable question may emerge, to wit, the necessity or expediency of the condemnation of the particular property. These are the cases that led the TV A, erroneously in my view, to assert the action of its Board could “not be set aside by a court.” Adirondack R. Co. v. New York, 176 U. S. 335, 349; Bragg v. Weaver, 251 U. S. 57, 58; Joslin Co. v. Providence, 262 U. S. 668, 678; Rindge Co. v. Los Angeles, 262 U. S. 700, 708.
The Chief Justice joins in this opinion.,