Court Opinion

ID: 9419314
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:48:38.110334+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:17.403115
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Frankfurter,
dissenting:
Both Pennsylvania and California, as part of their control over the supply and distribution of milk for the needs of their people, regulate the prices at which milk may be sold within the state. In both states, more particularly at Indiantown Gap Military Reservation, Pennsylvania, and at Moffett Field, California, units of the United States Army are stationed. At each of these sites the contracting officer, a junior officer in the Quartermaster Corps, invites bids for the sale of milk to the Army. Are these two con*297tracting officers authorized under existing federal law to accept bids that undercut the prices fixed by Pennsylvania and California for the supply of milk within their borders and thereby dislocate, in part at least, the regulatory systems established by the two states?
In Penn Dairies v. Milk Control Commission, ante, p. 261, Penn Dairies, a milk dealer of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, supplied milk for the use of the Army at Indian town Gap Military Reservation. Their sales were the result of successful bidding at prices below the minima fixed by the Pennsylvania Milk Control Law. Subsequently, when Penn Dairies applied for renewal of its license to do business under state law, the Pennsylvania Milk Control Commission denied the application on the ground that the sales to the Army were not immune from the minimum price provisions of the Pennsylvania law. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court sustained this determination.
In this case, Pacific Coast Dairy, a milk dealer of San Francisco, California, supplied milk for the use of the Army at Moffett Field, about thirty-five miles from San Francisco. Their sales, too, were the result of successful bidding at prices below those fixed by California law. For thus departing from the price provisions of the state law under which it was licensed to do business, the California Department of Agriculture instituted proceedings to revoke Pacific Coast Dairy’s license. To stay these proceedings the dairy sought a writ of mandamus, which was denied by the Supreme Court of California.
In my view, the Court in upholding the refusal by Pennsylvania to renew a license because of an arrangement made on behalf of the Government must imply that the contracting officer of the Indiantown Military Gap Reservation was not authorized to accept bids below the minimum price requirements set by Pennsylvania for the sale of milk within the state. In the California case, how*298ever, the Court holds that the contracting officer for Moffett Field may, in the case of sales and deliveries made on Moffett Field, contract at prices below those fixed by California for the sale of milk within its borders. Opposite legal results are thus reached for precisely the same practical situations. The justification for this incongruity in defining the scope of the authority of the two contracting officers is attributed to the difference in the nature of the Government’s proprietary interest in each of the two Army sites. Indiantown Gap Military Reservation is held by the United States under lease from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Moffett Field belongs to the United States outright. On the basis of this difference in the federal Government’s proprietary interest in the two Army facilities, Indiantown Gap Military Reservation is deemed not to be within the “exclusive jurisdiction” of the Government while Moffett Field is deemed within such “exclusive jurisdiction.” And from this classification it is deduced that milk sold to the Army for the use of our soldiers at Indiantown Gap Military Reservation must comply with the price provisions of Pennsylvania law, but that milk may be sold to the Army for the use of our soldiers at Moffett Field in disregard of the minimum prices set by California.
Legal refinements are not always the worse for eluding the quick understanding of a layman. But I do not believe that in determining the duty of contracting officers serving the same Army function — a matter that turns on considerations of policy in the relation of the various Army posts to the states in which they are situated — legal categories compel a difference in result where practical judgment and experience lead to an identity in result. The power given to Congress by Article I, § 8 of the Constitution, to “exercise exclusive Legislation” over federal enclaves is not so tyrannical as to preclude in law what good sense requires*
*299The so-called exclusive jurisdiction drawn from the grant to Congress of power to legislate exclusively has, as a matter of historical fact, become increasingly less and less exclusive. In early days when the activities of the federal Government made only negligible inroads upon territorial areas within the states, it was assumed that federal exclusiveness was a fact rather tiran a potentiality, and that the states were precluded from reserving authority in lands within the state which were ceded to the Government. But this notion never became law, and has now been formally repudiated. “The possible importance of reserving to the State jurisdiction for local purposes which involve no interference with the performance of governmental functions is becoming more and more clear as the activities of the Government expand and large areas within the States are acquired.” James v. Dravo Contracting Co., 302 U. S. 134, 148; and see Silas Mason Co. v. Tax Comm’n, 302 U. S. 186. Indeed, in the case of Moffett Field itself the authority of the United States is not in any true sense exclusive, even as to matters of political authority, for California’s act of cession provided that both criminal and civil process issued by California should have the same sanction on Moffett Field as elsewhere in the state.
Since exclusive authority need not be exercised by Congress, there is at times “uncertainty and confusion” whether jurisdiction belongs to the federal Government or has been left with the state. Bowen v. Johnston, 306 U. S. 19, 27. And although the acts of cession may leave “no room for doubt” that “jurisdiction” “remained with the State,” “administrative construction” may nevertheless generate federal jurisdiction. Id., at 29. Even where the federal Government supposedly has “exclusive” jurisdiction, a close examination of complicated legislation may uphold excise tax provisions of a state alcoholic beverage control law but not provisions that “go beyond aids *300to the collection of taxes and are truly regulatory in character.” Collins v. Yosemite Park Co., 304 U. S. 518, 533. And while lip service is paid to the doctrine of “exclusive jurisdiction” by professing to absorb for federal enclaves those laws of the state which were enforced there prior to its cession, the liberality with which state social measures are deemed not to impinge upon the national purposes for which the enclave was established, is a recognition in fact that the Constitution permits sensible adjustments between state and federal authority although activities subject to legal control take place on federal territory within a state. See, e. g., Stewart & Co. v. Sadrakula, 309 U. S. 94.
Enough has been said to show that the doctrine of “exclusive jurisdiction” over federal enclaves is not an imperative. The phrase is indeed a misnomer for the manifold legal phases of the diverse situations arising out of the existence of federally-owned lands within a state— problems calling not for a single, simple answer but for disposition in the light of the national purposes which an enclave serves. If Congress speaks, state power is of course determined by what Congress says. If Congress makes the law of the state in which there is a federal site as foreign there as is the law of China, then federal jurisdiction would really be exclusive. But short of such Congressional assertion of overriding authority, the phrase “exclusive jurisdiction” more often confounds than solves problems due to our federal system.
It is certainly an irrelevant factor in the legal equation before us. For in neither the Pennsylvania nor the California case is the power of Congress or of appropriately exercised military authority called into question. As to Pennsylvania, the Court has found that neither Congressional legislation nor discernible legislative policy immunized a government contractor from state regulation. Of course, if Congressional policy, howsoever expressed, *301authorized the Quartermaster to enter into such a contract in disregard of local milk price control legislation, the contractor would be immune from obedience to local requirements. Nor has controlling assertion of military-authority to disregard local price control been found. There is no suggestion that Congress or the Army has a policy regarding the purchase of milk for soldiers stationed in California which differs from that in Pennsylvania. State regulation, we have held in the case of Pennsylvania, “imposes no prohibition on the national government or its officers.” Neither does the California regulation. It clearly does not as to federal sites in California which have been leased to the Government, like the Indiantown Gap Military Reservation, or to sites where the state has reserved concurrent jurisdiction, like those in the Dravo and Mason cases, supra, or to federal territory where jurisdiction is doubtful or ambiguous, like the reservation in Bowen v. Johnston, supra. The California Supreme Court advises us that within the confines of California the United States is engaged in a great variety of activities: “The federal territory within the state is so fragmented that there may be several federal islands within a single marketing area. If they are citadels of immunity from state jurisdiction, they are also exceptional segments in areas that are otherwise subject to that jurisdiction. They stand out like colored pins on the map of California, and range from military reservations to soldiers’ homes, from court houses to penitentiaries, from post offices to Indian reservations, from national parks to regional dams.” 19 Cal. 2d 818, 828.
Can it be that the considerations of policy which resulted in a finding that neither the Constitution nor Congressional authority nor appropriate military regulation enabled the Army contracting officer in Pennsylvania, in supplying milk to the soldiers stationed in Pennsylvania, to free local dealers from the necessity of complying with *302a social measure not unrelated to health and deemed important to the welfare of the people of Pennsylvania, are present in some parts of California and not in others? And must a junior contracting officer of the Quartermaster Corps now attempt to ascertain whether these considerations of policy do or do not apply, depending upon whether the particular enclave is within the “exclusive jurisdiction” of the federal Government — a question so recondite, as the cases show, that it may be settled only by this Court after long travail? Is the result to turn upon the niceties of the law of sales and contracts? Suppose, for example, that the negotiations occur and the contracts are signed off Moffett Field, but delivery takes place there. Must inquiry be made as to where title has “passed” and the sale consummated?
These are not far-fetched suppositions. They are the inevitable practical consequences of making decision here depend upon technicalities of “exclusive jurisdiction”— legal subtleties which may become relevant in dealing with prosecution for crime, devolution of property, liability for torts, and the like, but which as a matter of good sense surely are wholly irrelevant in defining the duty of contracting officers of the United States in making contracts in the various States of the Union, where neither Congress nor the authoritative voice of the Army has spoken. In the absence of such assertion of superior authority, state laws such as those here under consideration appear, as a matter of sound public policy, equally appropriate whether the federal territory encysted within a state be held on long or short term lease or be owned by the Government on whatever terms of cession may have been imposed.
We are not dealing here with the authority of Congress, about which there can be no controversy, but with the authority of Government contracting officers. It is surely the policy of neither Congress nor the Army that such *303authority should vary from state to state or from post to post within the same state. On the contrary, there is every reason for assuming that, in the matter here involved, uniformity throughout the land is deemed an essential element of the national policy. Since, as the Court holds in the Pennsylvania ease, the national interest is furthered rather than impaired by requiring the Quartermaster at the Indiantown Military Reservation to observe the Pennsylvania Milk Control Law, there is every reason why the Quartermaster at Moffett Field should likewise observe the similar California law. And since he should observe the state law, California has a right to insist that the milk dealer licensed by it should not participate in a violation of the law of his state, by license from which he does business.