Court Opinion

ID: 9460248
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 21:45:37.65775+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:32.557038
License: Public Domain

IRVING HILL, District Judge
(specially concurring):
I concur in the result reached by the majority and in their articulation of the grounds upon which the result is reached. I do not fully join in the opinion and write this special concurrence only to indicate my view that Footnote 2 should not be a part of the opinion. Being unnecessary to the decision of the case, the footnote is dictum. It discusses a situation not presented in the instant case, i. e., the disposition in the trial court of a case in which the Commission acted without deferring to state authority and the trial court (or appellate court) later holds that it should have deferred. Since our holding in the instant case is that the Commission was not required to defer to state authority, I deem it unwise and inappropriate to comment upon what should be done in other eases involving a different result. As the Supreme Court said in United States and Interstate Commerce Commission v. Alaska Steamship Company, et al., 253 U.S. 113, 40 S.Ct. 448, 64 L.Ed. 808 (1920):
“ . . . [I]t is a settled principle in this court that it will determine only actual matters in controversy essential to the decision of the particular ease before it. . However convenient it might be to have decided the question of the power of the Commission to require the carriers to comply with an order prescribing bills of lading, this court ‘is not empowered to decide moot questions or abstract propositions, or to declare, for the government of future cases, principles or rules of law which cannot affect the result as to the thing in issue before it. . . . ’ California v. San Pablo & Tulare R. R. Co., 149 U.S. 308, 314 [13 S.Ct. 876, 878, 37 L.Ed. 747]; United States v. Hamburg-American Line, 239 U.S. 466, 475, 476 [36 S.Ct. 212, 60 L.Ed. 387] and previous cases of this court therein cited.” 253 U.S. at 116, 40 S.Ct. at 449.
My commitment to judicial self-restraint in opinion-writing is so deeply held that I feel it necessary to place this special concurrence on the record.