Court Opinion

ID: 9461958
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:28:39.266131+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:19.833503
License: Public Domain

GIBBONS, Circuit Judge,
dissenting, with whom Judges Aldisert and Hunter join.
I do not intend to repeat here the argument set forth in my dissent from the original panel decision in this case. Nothing advanced during its en banc consideration has moved me from the belief that the Supreme Court has yet to reach the seventh amendment issues as presented in the context of penalty proceedings under the Occupational Safety and Health Act. In essence, the en banc majority takes issue with my treatment of NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., 301 U.S. 1, 57 S.Ct. 615, 81 L.Ed. 893 (1937). Today, I will direct my discussion to the majority’s consideration of the seventh amendment issue in light of that decision.
The majority reasons that while the Supreme Court has recognized three broad generic categories of litigation:
1. Legal proceedings in courts;
2. Equitable and admiralty cases in courts; and
3. Administrative adjudications;
the Court has found a mandate for a jury trial only in the first classification.
The classification serves to define the issue. It recognizes, and I acknowledge, that if a case is one which in 1791 would have been within the jurisdiction of equity or admiralty it does not implicate the seventh amendment. But it seems clear that the seventh amendment was intended to prevent both federal equity and federal admiralty from swallowing up the jurisdiction of courts of law which afforded jury trials. It was over that very issue that the long battle concerning the extension of admiralty jurisdiction to inland waters was fought,1 *1220and out of which the “saving to suitors clause” evolved even before adoption of the seventh amendment.2 Neither the equity jurisdiction nor the admiralty jurisdiction are relied upon by the majority as a justification, in this case, for authorizing the imposition of an in per-sonam money judgment without a jury trial.
Our difference then, is solely over the third category, those involving “administrative adjudication.” At the outset it is well to recall that the term appears nowhere in the Constitution. In particular, it appears nowhere in Article III, § 2 which defines the categories of cases to which, and parties upon whom, the judicial power of the United States may be brought to bear. Only two of the clauses in Article III, § 2 are relevant to this case:
(1) “The judicial Power shall extend to all cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States . •. . , and
(2) “ — to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party . . ."
It might be argued that since the seventh amendment by its terms, applies only to suits at common law, the amendment limits only the first clause of Article III, § 2; that is, that it refers only to federal question eases in law. It might be further argued that the broader language “Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party”, since it does not repeat the “Law and Equity” language of the first clause, is not modified by the seventh amendment. Under that interpretation, in any suit to which the United States was a pa^ty, including a suit to collect money, a jury trial would be a matter of legislative grace. But that interpretation clearly proves too much, since the grant of diversity jurisdiction in Article III, § 2 is also “to Controversies” rather than to “Cases, in Law and Equity.” Yet, no one has ever suggested that the seventh amendment is inapplicable to diversity cases. Thus, I assume, as does the common consensus, that the seventh amendment applies to the entire judicial power of the United States to the extent that the exercise of that power involves suits at common law. I also assume, and I do not suppose the majority disagrees, that the seventh amendment binds the entire federal government, not merely the Article III courts. I also assume that Congress could not confer the entire diversity jurisdiction, including suits at common law, upon a non-Article III tribunal sitting without a jury. Nor, I suppose, would the ease be different *1221if Congress called those non-Article III adjudicators “administrators” rather than “judges.”3
But if the majority is right about this case, then my last two assumptions are dead wrong, for nothing in the majority opinion gives any definition to the term “administrative adjudications” other than to simply recognize the label which Congress has fastened upon it. Indeed, that is precisely the government’s position. When at oral argument the attorney appearing for the government was asked to suggest a standard by which an “administrative proceeding” falling outside the reach of the seventh amendment could be identified, the only standard he could suggest was the label Congress attached. The majority opinion, although it gives passing lip service to the principle of judicial review, embraces this position by totally omitting any attempt to give content either to the seventh amendment term “Suits at common law” or to its term “administrative adjudication.” The extent of its analysis is in three sentences:
“There is a line beyond which Congress may not transfer remedies from the courts to administrative agencies so as to evade the protection of the Seventh Amendment. As so often with constitutional adjudications, such a point need not be defined with precision to cover all cases for all time. We only decide the case before us, and, as the panel previously held, that line has not been crossed in this case.”
(Majority opinion at 1219) (footnote omitted).
But how do we know the line has not been crossed if we are not told where it is ? What neutral principle was brought to bear in deciding that this case fell on the permissible side of the invisible line?4 There is only one discernible to me in the majority’s opinion — that urged by the government. The line is wherever Congress says it is.
If this is the teaching of the one authority upon which the majority relies, then unbeknownst to the world of legal scholarship, NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., 301 U.S. 1, 57 S.Ct. 615, 81 L.Ed. 893 (1937), affected the most profound and enormous redistribution of power among the three branches of the federal government of any ease in the Court’s history. I had thought until today that the Court, not Congress, was *1222the final arbiter of the lines drawn in the Constitution. But if Congress can by fiat define the term “administrative adjudication” and thereby necessarily define the seventh amendment term “Suits at common law”, what role do the Article III courts play? I have already referred to the possibility of administrative diversity cases. Can Congress, acting under its commerce clause powers refer all contract cases affecting interstate commerce to an “administrative” non-jury adjudicator? And in a .sixth amendment context, can Congress “decriminalize” a whole range of conduct and refer enforcement of federal policies to an administrative civil commitment agency? Think of the judicial resources that would have been saved had that approach been taken during the Vietnam War with respect to the Selective Service Act. It is true, of course, that in either a sixth or a seventh amendment context, the elimination of a jury trial would still leave operable the due process protection of the fifth amendment. Thus some form of judicial review would remain.5 But my point is that whether we are dealing with the sixth amendment guaranty of a jury trial “in all criminal prosecutions,” or with the seventh amendment guaranty of a jury trial “[i]n Suits at common law,” the constitutional scheme of things requires that the Court, not Congress, give meaning to the Constitutional terms, and thereby define the limits of administrative proceedings.6
I suggest, moreover, that the Court has already done so with respect to the seventh amendment. In Pernell v. Southall Realty, 416 U.S. 363, 370, 94 S.Ct. 1723, 1727, 40 L.Ed.2d 198 (1974), Justice Marshall, upholding the right to a jury trial in an action for possession of land, quoted with approval the definition of actions at law in Whitehead v. Shattuck, 138 U.S. 146, 151, 11 S.Ct. 276, 34 L.Ed. 873 (1891):
“[it] would be difficult, and perhaps impossible, to state any general rule which would determine in all cases what should be deemed a suit in equity as distinguished from an action at law . . . ; but this may be said, that where an action is simply for the recovery and possession of specific, real, or personal property, or for the recovery of a money judgment, the action is one at law.” (emphasis supplied).
The so-called “administrative adjudiea-cation” in this case never had any object other than the recovery of a money judgment, yet the majority simply ac-ceeds to the Congressional determination that it is not an action at law.
I stated earlier that NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., supra, was the one authority upon which the majority relies. It is true that neither Curtis v. Loether, 415 U.S. 189, 94 S.Ct. 1005, 39 L.Ed.2d 260 (1974) nor Pernell v. Southall Realty, supra, to which the majority refers, actually support the conclusion that the Court, not Congress, must determine the contents of the constitutional term “Suits at common law.” Both upheld demands for jury trial, the first in a suit for damages for violation of Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, and the second in a suit for possession of land pursuant to the summary dispossess statute of the District of Columbia. In each case the Court distinguished Jones & Laughlin which was raised as a bar to jury trial, as an administrative proceeding. But neither case can be read for the proposition that by calling something an “administrative adjudication” Congress can decide to handle “Suits at common law” *1223without jury trials. No more could have been intended by these distinguishing references to Jones & Laughlin than to indicate the Court’s approval of congressional delegation of Article I power to an administrative agency in cases in which that procedure is constitutionally permissible. As I said in dissenting from the panel decision, there is no constitutional prohibition against referring matters of an equitable nature to an administrative fact-finding tribunal and back pay incidental to injunctive relief is a traditional equitable remedy. The approving citation of Whitehead v. Shattuck in Pernell v. Southall Realty, quoted earlier, should dispel any motion that the Court reads Jones & Laughlin as a major surrender of the power of judicial review.7
The majority quotes that part of the Jones & Laughlin opinion which refers to a “statutory proceeding.” One thing that is clear from Curtis v. Loether, and Pernell v. Southall Reaty, is that both decisions flatly reject any distinction between “Suits at common law” and “statutory proceedings.” Both cases involved statutory proceedings. The first was a statutory proceeding seeking recovery of a money judgment for housing discrimination. It was held to be an action at law. The second was a statutory proceeding seeking possession of land. It, too, was held to be an action at law. Thus the fact that the proceeding is statutory is simply irrelevant; as irrelevant as the fact that all federal judicial proceedings are statutory since all federal jurisdiction is statutory.
Moreover the majority quotation from Jones & Laughlin is no authority for the proposition that if Congress has relegated the proceeding to an administrative agency the seventh amendment does not apply. I read the quote with the following emphasis:
“It is argued that the [back pay award] is equivalent to a money judgment and hence contravenes the Seventh Amendment with respect to trial by jury. The Seventh Amendment provides that ‘In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars; the right of trial by jury shall be preserved.’ The Amendment thus preserves the right which existed under the common law when the Amendment was adopted. [Citations omitted]. Thus it has no application to cases where recovery of money damages is an incident to equitable relief even though damages might have been recovered in an action at law. [citations omitted]. It does not apply where the preceeding is not in the nature of a suit at common law. [citation omitted].
The instant case is not a suit at common law or in the nature of such a suit. The proceeding is one unknown to the common law. It is a statutory proceeding. Reinstatement of the employee and payment for time lost are requirements imposed for violation of the statute and are remedies appropriate to its enforcement. The contention under the Seventh Amendment is without merit.” 301 U.S. at 48-49, 57 S.Ct. at 629. (emphasis supplied).
To rely only on the paragraph referring to statutory proceedings unknown to the common law is to distort Chief Justice Hughes’ meaning. The suit was one in which the N.L.R.B. sought injunctive relief in the court of appeals, and incidental to that injunctive relief sought a back pay award. Of course an action for injunctive relief was unknown to the common law. No more can be read into Jones & Laughlin than the rejection of a demand for jury trial in the equitable enforcement proceeding. See Albemarle Paper Co. v. Moody, 422 U.S. 405, 443-447, 95 S.Ct. 2362, 45 L.Ed.2d 280 (1975) (Rehnquist, J., concurring).
I would concede, however, that Chief Justice Hughes wrote with less than usual precision in the quoted portion of *1224the opinion. To understand why he may have done so, the ease should be viewed in its historical setting. The decision was handed down on April 12, 1937, having been argued with four other Wagner Act cases on February 10 and 11, 1937. The back pay issue was peripheral in the extreme. Jones & Laughlin involved a frontal attack upon the power of Congress, acting under the Commerce Clause, to regulate the relations between an employer and an employee engaged in production or manufacture. The attack had succeeded in the Fifth Circuit in June of 1936. NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., 83 F.2d 998 (5th Cir. 1936). In many quarters it was expected to succeed in the Supreme Court as well since the Court only recently had struck down the N.I.R.A.,8 the A.A.A.,9 the Guffey Coal Conservation Act,10 and the New York minimum wage law.11 In the election in November ¡of 1936, President Roosevelt not only won reelection with 523 out of 531 electoral votes, but also enormously strengthened his party’s power in Congress. On February 5, 1937, just five days before the argument in J ones & Laughlin the President sent his “court-packing” proposal to Congress.12 Four days after the argument, Senator Wheeler introduced a joint resolution proposing an amendment to the Constitution which would permit Congress to overrule by a two-thirds vote a decision of the Supreme Court holding a federal statute unconstitutional.13 On March 11, 1937, Senator O’Mahoney introduced a joint resolution proposing a constitutional amendment which would prohibit any lower federal court from holding a federal statute unconstitutional, and which would also prohibit such action by the Supreme Court unless two-thirds of the members thereof by specific and separate opinion found it so beyond a reasonable doubt.14
Thus Jones & Laughlin was sub judice during the 66 days of the Court’s modern history when it found itself most completely isolated from the other two branches of federal government and most severely under attack. See e. g., 2 Pusey, Charles Evans Hughes 749-65 (1951); R. Jackson, The Struggle for Judicial Supremacy 176-96 (1941); J. Burns, Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox 291-304 (1956). The decision in Jones & Laughlin and the four other Wagner Act cases handed down the same day marked at least the beginning of the end of the Court’s attempt to impose its subjective economic views on the nation in the guise of substantive due process.15 But clearly the Wagner Act cases did not signal an end to the judicial review of congressional delegations of power. It is true that taken out of context, bits and pieces of the Court’s Jones & Laughlin opinion sound very deferential toward congressional authority to decide what may be committed to an administrative adjudicator. A deferential tone in the climate of the times was perfectly understandable. Deference by the Court to Congress in one set of circumstances, however, cannot be regarded as permanent surrender of constitutional authority. Compare Ex parte McCardle, 74 U.S. (7 Wall.) 506, 19 L.Ed. 264 (1869), with Ex parte Yerger, 75 U.S. (8 Wall.) 85, 19 L.Ed. 332 (1869).16 *1225Jones & Laughlin should be read not expansively, as the majority reads it, but cautiously, and with a thoughtful appreciation of the circumstances surrounding its announcement. Neither the Wheeler nor the O’Mahoney amendments nor Roosevelt’s “court-packing” plan ultimately succeeded, and it is still the Court, not Congress, which must ultimately give meaning to the seventh amendment.
The term “statutory proceedings” when referring to administrative proceedings is imprecise because it is overly generic. There are administrative proceedings in the nature of rule-making, rate-setting, or licensing which have nothing at all to do with this case. An earlier generation of judges probably would have called these proceedings legislative. See e. g., Justice Holmes’ description of rate-making in Prentis v. Atlantic Coast Line Co., 211 U.S. 210, 226, 29 S.Ct. 67, 53 L.Ed. 150 (1908). What the case sub judice involves is administrative adjudication, and the question is what kinds of adjudication can be relegated by Congress to decision by executive branch employees rather than by jurors?17 One answer is that any adjudication which Congress decrees should be committed to the discretion of an executive branch employee may be so delegated. Although the majority opinion in the three sentences quoted earlier nods to the seventh amendment and to the integrity of Article III judicial review, in reality it has simply deferred to Congress’ labeling of the proceeding as “administrative.” The other answer is that given by the Supreme Court in Curtis v. Loether, and Pernell v. Southall Realty. Congress cannot relegate fact-finding to any tribunal other than a jury in any proceeding that was in 1791 a “Suit at common law,”18 j Principled adjudication of the meaning of the constitutional term must be firmly rooted in the history of the common law, or the courts will be set adrift upon the same sea of subjectivity and arbitrariness which led to the great Court crisis of 1937.
In my dissent to the panel’s opinion, I attempted at some length to demonstrate that a proceeding, the sole object of which is the obtaining of an in ;personam money judgment, is a “Suit at common law” and thereby deserving of seventh amendment protection. I again dissent because I am unwilling to accept the majority’s view that an Article III court charged with interpreting the Constitution’s mandate must blindly defer to a Congressional direction that the proceeding below be labeled something else. Although I am completely in sympathy with the goals Congress sought to achieve in enacting the Occupational Safety and Health Act, the limitations on the exercise of federal power as set forth in the Constitution must, however, be observed by the legislative branch. Scrupulous regard for such principles may often seem to delay the attainment of desirable social goals, but as artificial as they sometimes appear, in the long run, they serve the higher purpose of preserving constitutional government.19

. C. Swisher, The Taney Period 1836-64, at' 423-47 (1974) (Volume V of the Oliver Wendell Holmes Devise History of the Supreme Court of the United States).

. The “saving to suitors” clause was enacted as part of § 9 of the Judiciary Act of 1789 in which Congress vested the district courts ■ with the admiralty jurisdiction authorized by Article III, § 2 of the Constitution. Act of Sept. 24, 1789, ch. 20, § 9, 1 Stat. 76-77. It provided in pertinent part:
“[T]he district court . . . shall also have exclusive original cognizance of all civil causes of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction . . . saving to suitors, in all cases, the right of a common law remedy, where the common law is competent to give it . .”
This provision, in somewhat altered form, is now codified in 28 U.S.C. § 1333(1). Its effect is to permit a suitor
“who holds an in personam claim, which might be enforced by suit in personam in admiralty, [to] also bring suit, at his election, in the ‘common law’ court — that is, by ordinary civil action in state court, or in federal court without reference to ‘admiralty’, given diversity of citizenship and the requisite jurisdictional amount.” G. Gilmore & C. Black, The Law of Admiralty § 1-13, at 37 (2d ed. 1975).
Neither the majority nor the government rely upon Crowell v. Benson, 285 U.S. 22, 52 S.Ct. 285, 76 L.Ed. 598 (1932) which upheld the validity of an award made pursuant to the Longshoreman’s and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act. 33 U.S.C. § 901 et seq. The Act referred the adjudicative process to an administrative agency, and enforcement of the agency award to the district court. The Supreme Court upheld the procedure, finding no violation of Article III by virtue of Congress’ authorizing adjudication by an administrative agency in the first instance rather than by a constitutional court.

. See generally H. Hart & H. Wechsler, The Federal Courts and the Federal System 396-401 (2d ed. 1973). Hart, The Power of Congress to Limit the Jurisdiction of Federal Courts: An Exercise in Dialectic, 66 Harv. L.Rev. 1362 (1953).

. In analyzing the import of Glidden v. Zdanok, 370 U.S. 530, 82 S.Ct. 1459, 8 L.Ed. 2d 671 (1962), in which the Supreme Court held the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals and the Court of Claims to be Article III courts, the authors of a leading text pose the following questions:
"Justice Harlan is clearly correct, is he not, when he states that the reason there is no right to trial by jury in the Court of Claims is not because the Court of Claims is not a ‘constitutional’ court, but because suits against the United States— whether in the Court of Claims or in a district court — are not suits ‘at common law’ within the meaning of the Seventh Amendment?
But what if a non-Article III court were to be given jurisdiction in a case that is a suit at common law within the meaning of the Seventh Amendment? Can it be argued that the very fact that the delegation is to a non-Article III court makes the Seventh Amendment inapposite (or perhaps that the factors justifying delegation to such a tribunal also affect the application of the Seventh Amendment) ? If so, is this an argument in favor of or against Congressional power to make such a delegation? ”
H. Hart & H. Weschler, supra, note 5, at 399-400. (emphasis in original).
See the discussion of Crowell v. Benson, supra, in connection with the limitations on the jurisdiction of Article III court enforcement of administrative penalties in Professor Hart’s celebrated “Dialogue.” Hart, The Power of Congress to Limit the Jurisdiction of Federal Courts: An Exercise in Dialectic, 66 Harv.L.Rev. 1362, 1374-79 (1953). Such refined analysis as is presented in these materials ought to suggest to the majority, the necessity for closer scrutiny of Congressional “labeling.”

. See generally H. Hart & H. Wechsler, The Federal Courts and the Federal System 396-97 (2d ed. 1973).

. See Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 177, 2 L.Ed. 60 (1803) (“It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.”) ; United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683, 703-05, 94 S.Ct. 3090, 3106, 41 L.Ed.2d 1039 (1974) '(“We therefore reaffirm that it is ‘emphatically the province and duty’ of this Court ‘to say what the law is’ . .”)

. But see Note, Due Process and Employee Safety; Conflict in OSHA Enforcement Procedures, 84 Yale L.J. 1380, 1380 n. 5 (1975).

. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U.S. 495, 55 S.Ct. 837, 79 L.Ed. 1570 (1935).

. United States v. Butler, 297 U.S. 1, 56 S.Ct. 312, 80 L.Ed. 477 (1936).

. Carter v. Carter Coal Co., 298 U.S. 238, 56 S.Ct. 855, 80 L.Ed. 1160 (1936).

. Morehead v. New York ex rel. Tipaldo, 298 U.S. 587, 56 S.Ct. 918, 80 L.Ed. 1347 (1936).

. H.R.Doc.No.142, 75th Cong., 1st Sess. (1937).

. S.J.Res. 80, 75th Cong., 1st Sess. (1937).

. S.J.Res. 98, 75th Cong., 1st Sess. (1937).

. N.L.R.B. v. Fruchauf Trailer Co., 301 U.S. 49, 57 S.Ct. 642, 81 L.Ed. 918 (1937) ; N.L.R.B. v. Friedman-Harry Marks Clothing Co., 301 U.S. 58, 57 S.Ct. 645, 81 L.Ed. 921 (1937) ; Associated Press v. N.L.R.B., 301 U.S. 103, 57 S.Ct. 650, 81 L.Ed. 953 (1937); Washington, Virginia & Maryland Coach Co. v. N.L.R.B., 301 U.S. 142, 57 S.Ct. 648, 81 L.Ed. 965 (1937).

. The history of the restoration of the Court’s authority from McCardle to Yerger to pass *1225upon the validity of congressional reconstruction by way of habeas corpus is recounted in 1 O. Fairman, Reconstruction and Reunion, 1864-1888, at 433-514, 558-618 (1971). (Volume VI of the Oliver Wendell Holmes Devise History of the Supreme Court of the United States).

. Cf. Comment, The Authority of the Circuit Judicial Councils: Separation of Powers in the Courts of Appeals, 5 Seton Hall L.Rev. 815 (1974).

. See note 6, supra. See generally Albemarle Paper Co. v. Moody, 422 U.S. 405, 443-447. 95 S.Ct. 2362, 44 L.Ed.2d 280 (1975) (Ruhnquist, J., concurring).

. Muniz v. Hoffman, 422 U.S. 454, 95 S.Ct. 2178, 45 L.Ed.2d 319 (1975) does not suggest a result on the seventh amendment issue different than I propose. There the Court had before it only matters of statutory construction and sixth amendment considerations in the context of “the historic rule that state and federal courts have the constitutional power to punisli any [petty] criminal contempt without a jury trial.” at 475, 95 S.Ct. at 2190. I would not suppose that executive branch agencies have a similar power. See, e. fir., ICC v. Brimson, 154 U.S. 447, 14 S.Ct. 1125, 38 L.Ed. 1047 (1894).