Court Opinion

ID: 9419325
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:48:42.179857+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:17.527892
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Jackson,
concurring:
I agree with the dissenting Justices that the decision of the District Court is “based” upon the construction of the Sherman Act. The District Court has also drawn conclusions from the language of the indictment which can no doubt be said to amount to a construction of the indictment. But I do not think that the court’s construction of the indictment constitutes an independent ground of decision such as this Court has held precludes its review on direct appeal.
However, one-half of the membership of the Court as constituted at the time this case was submitted do not agree with this view, which is certainly not free from doubt and is based on inferences from an oral and informal announcement of the District Court. In connection with the difficult problems that come up as a result of a dual appeal, we would be greatly aided if the District Courts in dismissing an indictment would indicate in the order the ground, and, if more than one, would separately state and number them. I am confident that a request from the Government to do so would generally be granted and that to do so would be of assistance to the Government in taking, and to us in passing on, appeals.
If the Court is to dispatch its business as an institution, some accommodation of views is necessary and, where no principle of importance is at stake, there are times when an insistence upon a division is not in the interests of the best administration of justice.
*447Such a case I consider this to be. To persist in my dissent would result either in affirmance of the judgment by an equally divided Court or in a reargument. There is difference of opinion as to whether, if we have jurisdiction, we may proceed beyond the construction of the Act and review opinions about the indictment which the lower court expressed but did not rely upon as an independent ground of decision. On that question I reserve opinion.
If, upon reargument in this Court, it should be decided that our review is limited to the correctness of the District Court’s construction of the Act, and that it erred in this respect, the views which the District Court has expressed as to the sufficiency of the allegations of the indictment would be likely to embarrass the trial court in passing on offers of proof, admissibility of evidence, motions going to the sufficiency of the evidence, and other questions. It is not unlikely that the trial court would regard the statements of the District Court about this indictment as “the law of the case.”
However the case may be disposed of, reargument seems to be in order, and I believe that the practical advantages favor rearguing it before the Circuit Court of Appeals, where there is no doubt that all of the questions can be decided.
Under these circumstances, to persist in my dissent would seem a captious insistence upon my reading of a District Court’s informal opinion as to which there is reasonable ground for difference. I should not desire to appear committed to this case as a precedent. I concur in the result only because it seems the most sensible way out of our impasse in the immediate case.