Court Opinion

ID: 9428136
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:22:55.436025+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:11.989077
License: Public Domain

Justice Rehnquist,
with whom The Chief Justice and Justice Stewart join, dissenting.
In a remarkable feat of judicial alchemy the Court today transforms state law into federal law. It decides that the construction of an enactment of the Pennsylvania Legislature, for which the consent of Congress was not required under the Constitution, and to which Congress never consented at all save in the vaguest terms some 25 years prior to its passage, presents a federal question. Ante, Part II. Nothing in the prior decisions of this Court suggests, say nothing of compels, such an untoward result.
The cases relied upon by the Court establish, at most, that the interpretation of an interstate compact sanctioned by Congress pursuant to the Compact Clause will present a federal question. See Petty v. Tennessee-Missouri Bridge Comm’n, 359 U. S. 275, 278 (1959) (“The construction of a compact sanctioned by Congress under Art. I, § 10, cl. 3, of the Constitution presents a federal question”) (emphasis supplied); West Virginia ex rel. Dyer v. Sims, 341 U. S. 22, 27 (1951) (“congressional consent [was] required”); Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Comm’n v. Colburn, 310 U. S. 419, 427 (1940) (“the construction of ... a compact sanctioned by Congress by virtue of Article I, % 10, Clause 3 of the Constitution, involves a federal Title, right, privilege or immu*451nity’ ”) (emphasis supplied). In light of our recent decisions, however, it cannot seriously be contended that the Detainer Agreement constitutes an “agreement or compact” as those terms have come to be understood in the Compact Clause. In New Hampshire v. Maine, 426 U. S. 363 (1976), we held that the “application of the Compact Clause is limited to agreements that are 'directed to the formation of any combination tending to the increase of the political power in the States, which may encroach upon or interfere with the just supremacy of the United States.’ ” Id., at 369, quoting Virginia v. Tennessee, 148 U. S. 503, 519 (1893). This rule was reaffirmed in United States Steel Corp. v. Multistate Tax Comm’n, 434 U. S. 452, 471 (1978), where the Court ruled that the quoted test “states the proper balance between federal and state power with respect to compacts and agreements among States.” Certainly nothing about the Detainer Agreement threatens the just supremacy of the United States or enhances state power to the detriment of federal sovereignty. As with the “compact” in Multistate Tax Comm’n, any State is free to join the Detainer Agreement, so it cannot be considered to elevate member States at the expense of nonmembers. See id., at 477-478. Finally, despite contrary intimations by the Court, ante, at 441, n. 9, the views of the drafters of the Agreement or its form are not controlling. The agreement involved in Multistate Tax Comm’n was termed a “compact” and congressional consent to it was repeatedly sought, 434 U. S., at 456, 458, n. 8, yet the Court nonetheless held it was not a compact within the Compact Clause. See also id., at 470-471 (“The mere form of the interstate agreement cannot be dispositive. . . . The relevant inquiry must be one of impact on our federal structure”).
Since the Detainer Agreement is not an “agreement or compact” within the purview of the Compact Clause, that constitutional provision is irrelevant to this case, and the Court’s reliance on it can only be described as baffling. Al*452though never maintaining that congressional consent was required by the Compact Clause for the Detainer Agreement— a conclusion foreclosed by our decisions- — the Court nonetheless views its inquiry as “whether the Detainer Agreement is a congressionally sanctioned interstate compact within Art. I, % 10, of the Constitution” and concludes in this case that “the consent of Congress transforms the State’s agreement into federal law under the Compact Clause.” Ante, at 439, 440 (emphasis supplied). Whether a particular state enactment is “within” or “under” the Compact Clause, however, depends on whether it requires the consent of Congress— the Clause speaks of nothing else. Whatever effect the Compact Clause may have on those laws it does cover, one would have thought it unnecessary to say that it can have no effect on those it does not cover. See Engdahl, Construction of Interstate Compacts: A Questionable Federal Question, 51 Va. L. Rev. 987, 1017 (1965) (“[T]he construction of a compact not requiring consent, even if Congress has consented, will not present a federal question . . .”). The Court stresses the federal interest in the area of extradition, ante, at 442, n. 10, but, for Compact Clause purposes, “[ajbsent a threat of encroachment or interference through enhanced state power, the existence of a federal interest is irrelevant.” Multistate Tax Comm’n, supra, at 480, n. 33.
If the Compact Clause of the Constitution does not operate to transform Pennsylvania’s statute into federal law, it must be the consent of Congress, albeit unnecessary, which does so. Such a proposition is, however, contrary to the established rule in other contexts. The most fundamental example was discussed in Coyle v. Smith, 221 U. S. 559, 568 (1911):
“. . . Congress may require, under penalty of denying admission, that the organic laws of a new State at the time of admission shall be such as to meet its approval. A constitution thus supervised by Congress would, after all, be a constitution of a State, and as such subject to *453alteration and amendment by the State after admission. Its force would be that of a state constitution, and not that of an act of Congress.”
The consent of Congress to state taxation of its instrumentalities does not mean that the interpretation of state tax laws presents a federal question, see Gully y. First National Bank, 299 U. S. 109, 115 (1936) (“That there is a federal law permitting such taxation does not change the basis of the suit, which is still the statute of the state, though the federal law is evidence to prove the statute valid”) (emphasis in original), and when Congress consents to state laws regulating commerce which would otherwise be prohibited the state laws remain state laws, see In re Rahrer, 140 U. S. 545, 561 (1891) (by consent “. . . Congress has not attempted to delegate the power to regulate commerce, ... or to adopt state laws”); Prudential Insurance Co. v. Benjamin, 328 U. S. 408, 438, n. 51 (1946) (“The . . . contention that Congress’ ‘adoption’ of South Carolina’s statute amounts to an unconstitutional delegation of Congress’ legislative power to the states obviously confuses Congress’ power to legislate with its power to consent to state legislation. They are not identical, though exercised in the same formal manner”). See generally Engdahl, supra, at 1015-1016. It is particularly unsettling that the Court would confuse an act of congressional consent with an act of legislation when the consent was completely gratuitous and given some 25 years before passage of the state law.
What is most disturbing about the Court’s analysis is its potential sweep. The statute books of the States are full of reciprocal legislation in the criminal area. See, e. g., Uniform Act to Secure the Attendance of Witnesses from Without a State in Criminal Proceedings, 11 U. L. A. 1 (Supp. 1980) (adopted in 54 jurisdictions); Uniform Rendition of Prisoners as Witnesses in Criminal Proceedings Act, 11 U. L. A. 547 (Supp. 1980) (adopted in 13 jurisdictions). As this Court made clear in Multistate Taoc Comm’n, 434 U. S., *454at 469-471, such reciprocal legislation is as subject to the Compact Clause as other more formal interstate agreements. See ibid, (discussing New York v. O’Neill, 359 U. S. 1 (1959), a case involving the Uniform Act to Secure the Attendance of Witnesses); see also 434 U. S., at 491 (White, J., dissenting). In light of the Court’s analysis in this case, it is not at all clear why the construction of each of the provisions in this broad array of state legislation is not a federal matter. It is apparently no answer that congressional consent was not required under the Compact Clause; the same is true with the Detainer Agreement. And the congressional “consent” in the Crime Control Consent Act of 1934 applies with the same force to all this reciprocal legislation as it does to the Detainer Agreement. Yet it has never been supposed that the construction of the terms of such reciprocal legislation is a matter on which federal courts could override the courts of the enacting State. Enough has been said to demonstrate that the Court’s opinion threatens to become a judicial Midas meandering through the state statute books, turning everything it touches into federal law.
Since I view the Detainer Agreement as a state statute, I would defer to the state court’s interpretation of it. It is sufficiently clear to me that the court in Commonwealth ex rel. Coleman v. Cuyler, 261 Pa. Super. 274, 396 A. 2d 394 (1978), disagrees with the statutory interpretation undertaken by the Court of Appeals below and by this Court.* *455I would therefore reverse and remand, with instructions to the Court of Appeals to consider respondent’s constitutional claims, which it avoided by what I consider unjustifiable statutory interpretation.

Judge Van der Voort, writing the opinion for the Pennsylvania court, assumed that the procedural protections sought by respondent were not incorporated as a matter of statutory interpretation in the Detainer Agreement, since he ruled that there was no constitutional deprivation in not affording those protections to prisoners subject to the Detainer Agreement. The state-court opinion contained a comprehensive survey of the features of both the Detainer Agreement and the Extradition Act, and did not read the Detainer Agreement to contain the protections which the federal court said were incorporated. Even Judge Spaeth, who dissented on the equal protection ground in the court decision, obviously considered *455that the procedural protections under the two Acts were different, or else there could not have been an equal protection challenge. See also Wallace v. Hewitt, 428 F. Supp. 39 (MD Pa. 1976).