Court Opinion

ID: 9422522
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:03:07.03564+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:37.420072
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Douglas, concurring.1
I had supposed that the activities of American labor organizations whether related to domestic vessels or to foreign ones were covered by the National Labor Relations Act, at least absent a treaty which evinces a different policy.2 Cf. Cook v. United States, 288 U. S. 102, 118— *23120. But my views were rejected in Benz v. Compania Naviera Hidalgo, 353 U. S. 138; and, having lost that cause in Benz, I bow to its inexorable extension here. The practical effect of our decision is to shift from all the taxpayers to seamen alone the main burden of financing an executive policy of assuring the availability of an adequate American-owned merchant fleet for federal use during national emergencies. See Note, Panlibhon Registration of American-Owned Merchant Ships: Government Policy and the Problem of the Courts, 60 Col. L. Rev. 711.

 [This opinion applies also to No. 33, Incres Steamship Co., Ltd., v. International Maritime Workers, post, p. 24.]

 It is agreed that Article XXII of the Treaty of Friendship, Commerce, and Consular Rights between the United States and Honduras, 45 Stat. 2618 (1927), and Article X of the Convention with Liberia of October 7, 1938, 54 Stat. 1751, 1756, grant those nations exclusive jurisdiction over the matters here involved.