Court Opinion

ID: 9421836
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:00:06.246016+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:32.737691
License: Public Domain

*259Mr. Justice Frankfurter,
whom Mr. Justice Harlan joins, dissenting.
It is the special obligation of this Court strictly to observe the limits of its jurisdiction. No matter how tempting the appeal of a particular situation, we should not indulge in disregard of the bounds, by which Congress has defined our power of appellate review. There will be time enough to. enforce the constitutional right, if right it be, which the Court now finds the. petitioner to possess when it is duly presented for judicial determination here, and there are ample modes open to the petitioner for assertion of such a claim in a way to require our adjudication.
The appellate power of this Court to review litigation originating in a state court can come into operation only if the judgment to be reviewed is the final judgment of' the highest.court of the State. That a judgment is the prerequisite for the appellate review of this Court is an ingredient of the constitutional requirement of the “Cases” or “Controversies” to which alone “The judicial Power shall extend.” U. S. Const., Art. III, § 2. That it be a “final judgment” was made a prerequisite by the very-Act which established this Court in 1789. Act of September 24, 1789, § 25, 1 Stat. 85, now 28 U. S. C. § 1257. “Close observance of this limitation upon the Court is not regard for a strangling technicality.” Republic Natural Gas Co. v. Oklahoma, 334 U. S. 62, 67. Such has been the undeviating constitutional, legislative and judicial command binding on this Court and respected by it without exception or qualification to this very day.
The requisites of such a final judgment are not met by what a state court may deem to be a case or judgment in the exercise of the state court’s jurisdiction. See Tyler v. Judges, 179 U. S. 405; Doremus v. Board of Education, *260342 U. S. 429. Nor -can consent of the parties to the determination of a cause by this Court overleap the jurisdictional limitations which are part of this. Court’s being. Litigants cannot give this Court power which the Constitution and Congress have withheld. Mansfield, C. & L. M. R. Co. v. Swan, 111 U. S. 379, 382. The President of the United States himself, cannot secure from this Court determination of a legal question except when such a question duly arises in the eourse of adjudication of a case or controversy, even though he asks for needed help in a great national emergency. See President. Washington’s questions in 33 Writings of Washington (Fitzpatrick ed. 1940) 15-19, 28, and the correspondence between Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson and Chief Justice Jay, in 3 Correspondence and Public Papers of John Jay (Johnston ed. 1891) 486-489.
As the importance of the interrogator. and the significance of the question confer no power upon this Court to render-advisory opinions, a compassionate appeal cannot endow it with jurisdiction to review a judgment which is. not final. One’s sympathy, however deep, with petitioner’s claim cannot dispense with the precondition of a final judgment for exercising our judicial power. If the history of this Court teaches one lesson as important as any, it is the regretful consequences of straying off the clear path of its jurisdiction to reach a desired result. This Court cannot justify a yielding to the temptation to cut corners in disregard of what the Constitution and Congress command. Burns has other paths to this Court to assert what, forsooth, all of us may deem a failure by Ohio to accord him — a constitutional right— other paths besides our indifference to the rules by which we are bound. Specifically, he has four obvious remedies for securing an ascertainment and enforcement of his constitutional claim by this Court without having. *261this Court treat the letter of a clerk of a court as a court’s judgment. For although the caption of the case would indicate that our review was of the Supreme Court of Ohio, in fact the review can only be of the refusal of the clerk of-that court to docket petitioner’s papers until a twenty-dollar docket fee was paid. The Supreme Court of Ohio was not asked to consider the appeal, nor did it itself refuse to do so'. The decisions in State ex rel. Dawson v. Roberts, 165 Ohio St. 341, 135 N. E. 2d 409, and State ex rel. Wanamaker v. Miller, 164 Ohio St. 174 and 176, 128 N. E. 2d 108 and 110, mandamus denied sub nom. Wanamaker v. Supreme Court of Ohio, 350 U. S. 881, demonstrate conclusively that the Ohio court has retained the ultimate power to determine what papers will be permitted to be filed. There is not the remotest indication in the record that this petitioner’s claim to file his appeal without paying the customary filing fee, because of indigence, was brought to the attention of the Ohio Supreme Court, nor is there any showing in the record that in writing his letter the clerk was acting át the specific behest of that court in this case.
(1) Petitioner may make a direct application addressed in terms to the judges of the Supreme Court of Ohio. Such applications informally expressed by way of letters are frequently addressed to this Court, and are-accepted here as the basis for judgments by this Court. We are not to assume that an application so addressed to the judges of the Ohio Supreme Court will not be transmitted to that court and acted, upon by it. This is not merely an appropriate assumption about the functioning of courts. It is an assumption one can confidently make based upon the records in this Court. See Wanamaker v. Supreme Court of Ohio, supra. (Papers filed here in connection with the Wanamaker case make it clear that the Supreme Court of Ohio does consider letters *262asking that that court instruct its clerk to accept petitions for filing.) The Supreme Court of Ohio might well yield to this claim of Burns as other courts in like situations have yielded since Griffin v. Illinois, 351 U. S. 12. But in any event, a denial of Burns’ application or refusal to entertain it would constitute a judgment of that court as an appropriate prerequisite for review here.
(2) Ever since § 13 of the Act of September 24, 1789, 1 Stat. 81, as amended, 28 U. S. C. § 1661, this Court has had power to issue mandamus in protection of its'appellate jurisdiction in order to avoid frustration of it. This is an exercise of anticipatory review by bringing here directly a case which could be brought to this Court in due course.
(3) Under the Civil Rights Act, R. S. § 1979, 42 U. S. C. § 1983, Burns, like others before him who have allegedly been denied constitutional rights under color of any statute, of a State, may have his constitutional rights determined and, incidentally, secure heavy damages for any denial of constitutional rights. See Lane v. Wilson, 307 U. S. 268.
(4) Burns’ claim, in essence, is unlawfül detention because of a denial of a constitutional right under the Fourteenth Amendment. That- lays, the foundation for a habeas corpus proceeding in the United States District Court. See Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U. S. 458. To be sure, if the right he claims be recognized in habeas corpus proceedings, he would not be released as a matter of course but merely conditionally on the State Supreme Court’s entertaining his petition for review as an indigent incapable of meeting court costs. The contingent nature of the release would-not impair the availability of habeas corpus. See Chin Yow v. United States, 208 U. S. 8.
Thus, it cannot be urged that necessity compels what the Constitution and statutes forbid — adjudication here of a claim which has not been rejected in a final judgment *263of a state court. Adherence to the dictates of the laws which govern our jurisdiction, though it may result in postponement of our determination of petitioner’s rights, is the best assurance of the vindication of justice under law through the power of the courts. We should dismiss the writ of certiorari inasmuch as there has been no final judgment over which we have appellate power.