Court Opinion

ID: 9419142
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:46:38.188783+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:41:55.797429
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Roberts,
dissenting.
I am of opinion that the judgment should be reversed.
• The indictment adequately charges a conspiracy to restrain trade and commerce with the specific purpose of preventing Anheuser-Busch from receiving in interstate commerce commodities and materials intended for use in its plant; of preventing the Borsari Corporation from obtaining materials in interstate commerce for use in performing a contract for Anheuser-Busch, and of preventing the Stocker Company from, receiving materials in like manner for the construction of a building for the Gaylord Corporation. The indictment further charges that the conspiracy was to restrain interstate commerce flowing from Missouri into other states of products of Anheuser-Busch and generally to restrain the interstate trade and commerce of the three corporations named.1
Without detailing the allegations of the indictment, it is sufficient to say that they undeniably charge a secondary boycott, affecting interstate commerce.
This court, and many state tribunals, over a long period of years, have held such' a secondary boycott illegal. In 1908 this court held such a secondary boycott, instigated to enforce the demands of a labor union against *244an employer, was a violation of the Sherman Act and could be restrained at the suit of the employer.2 It is matter of history that labor unions insisted they were not within the purview of the Sherman Act but this court held to the contrary. As a result of continual agitation the Clayton Act was adopted. That Act, as amended, became effective October 15, 1914.3 Subsequently suits in equity were brought to restrain secondary boycotts similar to those involved in earlier cases. The contention was made that the Clayton Act exempted labor organizations from such suits. That contention was not sustained.4 Upon the fullest consideration, this court reached the conclusion that the provisions of § 20 of the Clayton Act governed not the substantive rights of persons and organizations but merely regulated the practice according to which, and the conditions under which, equitable relief might be granted in suits of this character. Section 6 has no bearing on the offense charged in this case.
This court also unanimously held that a conspiracy such as is charged in the instant case renders the conspirators liable to criminal prosecution by the United States under the anti-trust acts.5
It is common knowledge that the agitation for complete exemption of labor unions from the provisions of the anti-trust laws persisted. Instead of granting the complete exemption desired, Congress adopted, March 23, 1932, the Norris-LaGuardia Act.6 The title and the contents of that Act, as well as its legislative history,7 dem*245onstrate beyond question that its purpose was to define and to limit the jurisdiction of federal courts sitting in equity. The Act broadens the scope of labor disputes as theretofore understood, that is, disputes between an employer and his employes with respect to wages, hours, and working conditions, and provides that before a federal court can enter an injunction to restrain illegal acts certain preliminary findings, based on evidence, must be made. The Act further deprives the courts of the right to issue an injunction against the doing of certain acts by labor organizations or their members. It is unnecessary to detail the acts as to which the jurisdiction of a court of equity is abolished. It is sufficient to say, what a reading of the Act makes letter clear, that the jurisdiction of actions for damages authorized by the Sherman Act, and of the criminal offenses denounced by that Act, are not touched by the Norris-LaGuardia Act.
By a process of construction never, as I think, heretofore indulged by this court, it is now found that, because Congress forbade the issuing of injunctions to restrain certain conduct, it intended to repeal the provisions of the Sherman Act authorizing actions at law and criminal prosecutions for the commission of torts and crimes defined by the anti-trust laws. The doctrine now announced seems to be that an indication of a change of policy in an Act as respects one specific item in a general field of the law, covered by an earlier Act, justifies this court in spelling out an implied repeal of the whole of the earlier statute as applied to conduct of the sort here involved. I venture to say that no court has ever undertaken so radically to legislate where Congress has refused so to do.8
The construction of the act now adopted is the more clearly inadmissible when we remember that the scope *246of proposed amendments and repeals of the anti-trust laws in respect of labor organizations has been the subject of constant controversy and consideration in Congress. In the light of this history, to attribute to Congress an intent to repeal legislation which has had a definite and well understood scope and effect for decades past, by resurrecting a rejected construction of the Clayton Act and extending a policy strictly limited by the Congress itself in the Norris-LaGuardia Act, seems to me a usurpation by the courts of the function of the Congress not only novel but fraught, as well, with the most serious dangers to our constitutional system of division of powers.
The Chief Justice joins in this opinion.

 C. E. Stevens Co. v. Foster & Kleiser Co., 311 U. S. 255.

 Loewe v. Lawlor, 208 U. S. 274.

 c. 323, 38 Stat. 730.

 Duplex Printing Press Co. v. Deering, 254 U. S. 443; Bedford Cut Stone Co. v. Journeymen Stone Cutters’ Assn., 274 U. S. 37.

 United States v. Brims, 272 U. S. 549.

 c. 90, 47 Stat. 70; 29 U. S. C. §§ 101-115.

 S. Rep. No. 163, 72d Cong., 1st Sess., pp. 7-8; H. Rep. No. 669, 72d Cong., 1st Sess., pp. 2-3; 75 Cong. Rec. 5464, 5467.

 The rule always heretofore followed in respect of implied repeal was recently expounded in an analogous situation in United States v. Borden Co., 308 U. S. 188, 198.