Court Opinion

ID: 9424303
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:11:11.511482+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:49.581672
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Douglas,
dissenting.
I agree with the District Court that the case is too hypothetical to qualify as a “case” or “controversy” within the meaning of Article III and I would affirm. I do not, however, share the aversion to 28 U. S. C. § 1253 which the Court's opinion reflects. I would be hospitable to its aim and purpose as my dissent in Swift & Co. v. Wickham, 382 U. S. 111, 129, indicates. The declaratory judgment is, I think, “an order granting or denying . . . an . . . injunction” within the meaning of § 1253.
Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martines, 372 U. S. 144, is not to the contrary. It merely held that in some circumstances “an action solely for declaratory relief” could be tried before a single judge where the “relief sought and the order entered affected an Act of Congress in a totally noncoercive fashion.” Id., at 154, 155. We indicated, however, that a different result would follow “whenever the operation of a statutory scheme may be immediately disrupted before a final judicial determination of the validity of the trial court’s order can be obtained.” Id., at 155.
The Kennedy case, in other words, involved solely the question whether a three-judge court need always be summoned where no injunctive relief was asked or contemplated. The answer involved an analysis of 28 U. S. C. § 2281 and § 2282. We are now concerned with *433§ 1253 and the meaning of “an order granting or denying . . . an . . . injunction.” The declaratory judgment may well contain a “thou shalt not” as commanding as any injunction. Or its refusal may be as definitive an adjudication as the refusal of an injunction. Ordinarily a declaratory judgment will result in precisely the same interference with and disruption of state proceedings that the long-standing policy limiting injunctions was designed to avoid.
Where, as here, the three-judge court was properly convened, I would think that any action it took, which was denying or granting an injunction or its equivalent, would be properly here under 28 U. S. C. § 1253.