Court Opinion

ID: 9425677
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:15:24.857003+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:56.894719
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Stewart,
with whom The Chief Justice, Mr. Justice Powell, and Mr. Justice Rehnquist join, dissenting. •
• The Court today reverses the Court of Appeals and holds that this case is not moot, despite the fact that the underlying labor dispute that gave rise to the petitioners’ claims ended even before the parties made their initial appearance in the District. Court. I think this . holding ignores the limitations placed upon the federal-judiciary by Art. III . of the Constitution and disregards the clear teachings of prior cases. Accordingly, I dissent.
This Court has repeatedly recognized that the inability of the' federal judiciary “to review moot cases derives from the requirement of Art. Ill of the Constitution under which the exercise of judicial power depends upon the. existence of a case or controversy.” Liner v. Jafco, Inc., 375 U. S. 301, 306 n. 3. See also North Carolina v. Rice, 404 U. S. 244, 246; Powell v. McCormack, 395 U. S. 486, 496 n. 7; Sibron v. New York, 392 U. S. 40,. 50 n. 8. Since Art. Ill courts are precluded from issuing advisory opinions, Hay bum’s Case, 2 Dall. 409*;. Muskrat v. United States, 219 U. S. 346, it necessarily follows that they are impotent “to decide questions that cannot affect the.rights of litigants in the case before, them.” North Carolina v. Rice, supra, at 246; St. Pierre v. United States, 319 U. S. 41, 42.1
*128These broad constitutional principles, of course, provide no more than the starting point, since the decision as to whether any particular lawsuit is moot can be made only after analysis- of the .precise factual situation of the parties involved. ’ But in my view our task in the present case is greatly simplified, for this Court has had several occasions within the. past 20 years to apply the general principles of mootness- to the specific facts of labor disputes closely analogous to the one at hand.
The first of these cases was Harris v. Battle, 348 U. S. 8.03, in which the.issue was whether a Virginia statute that permitted the state Governor to order that “possession” be taken of a transit company whose employees were on strike was in conflict with the National Labor Relations Act. The underlying labor dispute was settled, and the seizure terminated before the case came to trial, but the trial court nevertheless proceeded to decide the merits of the controversy, finding the statute constitutional. After the Virginia Supreme Court refused review, an appeal was taken to this Court. In a brief per curiam opinion, this Court held that the case was. moot and ordered the appeal dismissed.
..In Oil Workers Unions v. Missouri, 361 U. S. 363, we had occasion to explicate the. holding of Harris v. Battle in the context of a challenge to Missouri’s King-Thompson Act, which allowed the Governor on behalf of the -State to take possession of and operate a privatély owned pütílic utility affected by a work stoppage. In that case, the underlying strike and seizure had terminated while the case was on appeal to the Supreme Court of Missouri. Nonetheless, that court considered the merits of the law*129suit, holding the King-Thompson Act constitutional. We read Harris v. Battle as requiring that the case be held moot, since the termination of both the strike and the seizure left “no 'actual matters in controversy essential to the decision of the particular case’ ” then before us. 361 U. S., at 367, quoting from United States v. Alaska S. S. Co., 253 U. S. 113, 116.
The constitutionality of the King-Thompson Act was again at issue in Bus Employees v. Missouri, 374 U. S. 74. The strike and seizure in that case were still in effect at the time of the decision of the Supreme Court of Missouri, but, after. the appellants’ jurisdictional statement was filed in this Court, the Governor of Missouri terminated the outstanding seizure order. ' Consequently, the appellees argued that the case had become moot, relying on Harris and Oil Workers. We rejected the contention, noting that in both those cases, the underlying labor dispute had been settled by the time the litigation reached this Court. In Bus Employees, by contrast, the strike was still unresolved, and the appellants were thus fully subject to the provisions of th,e King-Thompson Act. Hence, we concluded that Harris and Oil Workers did not control, .and we proceeded to decide the merits of the case, holding the Missouri law to be in conflict with the National Labor Relations Act, and thus invalid under the Supremacy Clause.
I think it is clear that the facts of the case before us.serve to bring it within the teaching of Harris and Oil Workers, and outside the ambit of Bus Employees. Here, as in Harris and Oil Workers, both the underlying work stoppage and the challenged governmental action— the providing of welfare benefits to the petitioners’ employees — had ceased long before review was sought in this Court.. Any view that a federal court might express on the merits of the petitioners’ Supremacy Clause claims *130would, therefore, amount to an advisory opinion, having no effect on any “actual matters in controversy.” As we noted in Oil Workers, such an undertaking would ignore a “basic limitation upon the duty and function of the Court, and . . . disregard principles of judicial administration long established and repeatedly followed.” 361 U. S., at 368.
The Court offers essentially two arguments aifned at distinguishing this case from Harris and Oil Workers. First, it says that the very existence of the New. Jersey welfare programs constitutes a continuing burden on the petitioners’ ability to engage in collective bargaining with the respondent union. Secondly, the Court says that the underlying controversy here is “capable of repetition, yet evading review,” and thus comes within the rule of Southern Pac. Terminal Co. v. ICC, 219 U. S. 498, 515.
Similar arguments, however, were considered and rejected in both Harris and Oil Workers. In each of those cases it was argued that the Southern Pacific doctrine prevented a finding of mootness, and it was also argued that the case was not moot because of the continuing threat of state seizure of public utilities in future labor disputes. The Court’s summary dismissal of the Harris appeal necessarily rejected both of these contentions, and we explicitly adhered to that holding in Oil Workers:
“In [Harris] it was urged that the controversy was not moot because of the continuing threat of state seizure in future labor disputes. It was argued that the State’s abandonment of alleged unconstitutional activity after its objective had been accomplished should not be permitted to forestall decision as to the validity of the statute under which the State had purported to act. It was contended that the situation was akin to cases like Southern Pac. Terminal Co. v. Interstate Commerce Comm’n, 219 *131U. S. 498, 514-516. In finding that the controversy was moot, the Court necessarily rejected all these contentions. 348 U. S. 803. Upon the authority of that decision the same contentions must be rejected in the present case. See also Barker Co. v. Painters Union, 281 U. S. 462; Commercial Cable Co. v. Burleson, 250 U. S. 360.” 361 U. S., at 368-369 (footnotes omitted).
1 find no reason to depart from this holding in the case before us. While it is not inconceivable that the petitioners’ employees will once again strike and perhaps once again become eligible for future New Jersey welfare benefits, I find little to distinguish that hypothetical situation from the “speculative possibility of invocation of the'King-Thompson Act in some future labor dispute”2 that was present in Oil Workers. And, even if it could be assumed that the present controversy is “capable of repetition” within the meaning of the Southern Pacific test, I am less than confident that the issues presented can truly be characterized as “evading review.” If nothing else, thé Bus Employees case teaches that even the most confident predictions about the future unreviewabiiity. of specific legal controversies are often proved inaccurate. |ndeed, several courts of appeals have had the opportunity to consider the precise Supremacy Clause issues now raised- by the petitioners in the context of ongoing labor disputes.3 Given that experience, I *132cannot conclude that it is permissible to resolve .these important questions in a case where their resolution will have no direct effect on the parties to the litigation.
The argument that eligibility of strikers for future New Jersey welfare benefits might affect the “ongoing” process of collective- bargaining fares no better in the light of the Oil Workers decision. The continued exist-, ence of the King-Thompson Act in Oil Workers arguably had a most significant effect on the employees’ collective-bargaining ability, since it threatened to deprive them of their principal economic weapon, the capacity to strike. Yet the Court found the continuing threat of seizure in future labor disputes to be insufficient to save the Oil Workers case from mootness. No different weight should be accorded to the petitioners’ argument that the possibility of strikers receiving welfare benefits will make future work stoppages less onerous for their employees.4
*133In short, I think that this case is completely controlled by Harris and Oil Workers. The doctrine of mootness is already a difficult and complex one, and I think that the Court today muddies the waters further by straining unnecessarily to distinguish and limit some , of the few clear precedents available to us.
For these reasons I would affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.

 See generally Diamond, Federal Jurisdiction to Decide Moot Cases, 94 XJ. Pa. L. Rev. 125; Note, Mootness on Appeal in the *128Slipreme Court, 83 Harv. L. Rev. .1672; Note, Mootness and Ripeness: The Postman Always Rings Twice, 65 Col. L. Rev. 867; Note, Cases Moot, on Appeal: A Limit on the Judicial Power, 103 U. Pa. L. Rev. 772.

 Bus Employees v. Missouri, 374 U. S. 74, 78.

 In ITT Lamp Division v. Minter, 435 F. 2d 989 (CA1), two cases were consolidated on appeal; one of them. involved an ongoing strike. Similarly, the underlying labor dispute in Russo v. Kirby, 453 F. 2d 548 (CA2), was still in effect at'the time of the Court of Appeals’ decision, although the appellate court did not reach the employers’ Supremacy Clause arguments, since it found that the District Court lacked jurisdiction to hear the suit,, -which *132had been brought by strikers to compel the payment of welfare benefits.

 The Court characterizes the governmental action challenged in Oil Workers and Harris as more "remote” and "contingent" than the . New Jersey policy at hand. For mootness purposes, I think that this is a distinction without a difference. For one thing, New Jersey does not automatically extend welfare benefits to striking workers; it merely makes them eligible to receive such benefits, provided that they meet all other appropriate criteria. Thus, for th^ challenged governmental action here, to recur, at least two things must happen: the. respondent union must again call a strike, and the workers must satisfy the standards of need that may then be set forth in the New Jersey welfare statutes. If the threat. of seizure in Oil Workers was viewed as “contingent” in nature, no different conclusion can be reached here.
Moreover, as the Court concedes, ante, at 123 n. 7, the threat of seizure in Oil Workers involved-“a far more severe form” of governmental interference in the collective-bargaining process than does the New Jersey policy of making strikers eligible for welfare benefits, since invocation of the Missouri statute served t.o cripple any strike *133completely. Thus, even if the governmental action involved in Oil Workers is viewed as more “contingent” than in the present case, I cannot understand how its effect on the collective-bargaining process can be characterized as less serious.