Court Opinion

ID: 9678485
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 06:21:02.367125+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:04.905409
License: Public Domain

MADDEN, Judge (concurring).
I agree with the court that the Government’s demurrer should be overruled, but I do not agree with some of the reasons given by the court, nor with the proposed further procedure in the case. As to the Government’s contention that the claim here in question is for a pension within the meaning of our jurisdictional' act which does not give us jurisdiction of pension claims, I agree with the court that the claim is not for such a pension. As to the Government’s contention that we lack jurisdiction because the claim is for a gratuity, I ■think we have jurisdiction of a claim for a so-called gratuity, if the claim is founded upon an act of Congress awarding the gratuity in question
I disagree with the court’s view that this is a claim founded upon a contract. I see in the statute providing for the continued payment of salary to resigned federal judges no contract, but only a law. I have no doubt of the correctness of the court’s explanation of how the statute came to be enacted. Every statute fixing a term of office and a salary for a public official has a reason, viz., that such a term and such a salary will induce a capable person to accept appointment to the office. But, I think, such a statute is not an offer to a contract, which entitles the person who accepts the office to insist that the statute shall be left unchanged until he has received what the statute, at the time he accepted the office, provided. I think that the only pay statutes which may not be changed to the detriment of the officeholder are statutes fixing the salaries of those federal judges, the reduction of whose salaries is forbidden by the Constitution. The Constitutional protection does not extend to persons who have been but are no longer such federal judges, they having resigned from the office. I do not suggest, of course, that a contract of the United States might not take the form of a statute. That has occurred, to our knowledge, in the Government’s dealings with some Indian tribes. But a statute which is also a contract is an unusual piece of legislation, and I see no evidence whatever that the statute here in question was of that unusual kind.1
I disagree with the court as to the effect of the plaintiff’s letter to the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives, renouncing his rights to the funds here sued for. If he had been a *215sitting judge, or any other official whose salary was set by statute, any agreement on his part to accept less than the statutory salary would have been invalid. United States v. Andrews, 240 U.S. 90, 36 S.Ct. 349, 60 L.Ed. 541. I suppose that the same doctrine would apply to any person who was entitled under a statute, to a payment of money. If, for example, the administrative officer whose responsibility it was to award a pension to a former soldier, or to an aged person, should make an agreement with that person that he should receive less than the statutory amount, I think the agreement would be invalid. And so I think the plaintiff’s renunciation of what he was entitled to under the statute was without effect. The court’s opinion does not make it clear whether it thinks the effect of the renunciation was contractual, ¿he consideration being the withholding of impeachment proceedings, or whether it had the effect of an estoppel which created an equitable defense to the plaintiff’s present claim. I think it had no effect whatever, and I think that to allow a committee of one branch of Congress to bargain the plaintiff out of a right given him by a regularly enacted statute would be a contradiction of the court’s own analysis of the plaintiff’s rights under that statute as being contractual. If they were contractual, which I think they were not, how could a committee of the House of Representatives modify a contract which Congress as a whole had made?
It follows from what I have said that I think that the question of whether the plaintiff was of sound mind or not when he purported to renounce his statutory right is irrelevant, and I would not direct this court’s commissioner to inquire into it.
The Government’s ultimate reliance is on the act of June 24, 1946, 60 Stat. 304. Its text is as follows: “That after July 14, 1945, no payments shall be made under section 260 of the Judicial Code to Albert W. Johnson (or to his estate), formerly district judge of the District Court of the United States for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, who resigned as such judge on July 3, 1945, and who, on July 14, 1945, renounced and relinquished his rights under section 260 of the Judicial Code to receive the salary therein provided for judges who resign after having served at least ten years and having attained the age of seventy years.”
When -this act is read in context with section 6 of the act of February 25, 1919, ch. 29, 40 Stat. 1157, 28 U.S.C.A. § 375, the pertinent statutory law may be paraphrased as follows: When any judge, except Albert Williams Johnson, of any court of the United States, appointed to hold his office during good behavior, resigns his office after having held a commission or commissions as judge of any such court or courts at least ten years continuously, and having attained the age of seventy years, he shall, during the residue of his natural life, receive the salary which is payable at the time of his resignation for the office that he held at the time of his resignation. * * *
The question arises, why is Albert Williams Johnson singled out from all the other persons who answer the general description given in the statute ? The answer is plain. He is being punished. And who tried him and found him deserving of punishment? The Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives. The act of June 24, 1946, is a Bill of Pains and Penalties, which, according to the precedents, is a Bill of Attainder, as that expression is used in the Constitution. I think that the act of June 24, 1946, is unconstitutional and is, therefore, no bar to the plaintiff’s action. United States v. Lovett, 328 U.S. 303, 66 S.Ct. 1073, 90 L. Ed. 1252; affirming Lovett v. United States, 66 F.Supp. 142, 104 Ct.Cl. 557.
The Constitutional power of Congress to try and punish offenses, other than the offense of contempt of Congress, is limited to impeachment of public officers. The Constitution provides for the procedure, which is, in effect, indictment by the House of Representatives and trial by the Senate, a two-thirds vote in the Senate being necessary for conviction. In this case Congress dispensed with the constitutionally authorized procedure, if it was applicable to a resigned judge, as to which I express no opinion, and punished the plaintiff by the enactment of a statute. I think the Constitution forbids it to do that.
*216The- court’s opinion quotes the report of the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives, which shows that the committee was convinced that the plaintiff was guilty of serious crimes. The court’s opinion also states that the plaintiff was subsequently tried in a criminal proceeding for some of the offenses which had been investigated by the Committee on the Judiciary, and was acquitted. I think both these facts are wholly irrelevant to our decision of the plaintiff’s case.
I think the Government’s demurrer should be overruled, but I would limit the hearing of the case before the commissioner of this court to the facts which are relevant to the issues as I have stated them.

 See Hilton v. Sullivan, 1948, 68 S.Ct. 1020.