Court Opinion

ID: 9421447
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:58:19.103041+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:30.266848
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Burton,
whom Mr. Justice Harlan joins,
concurring in the result.
This suit was brought in a United States District Court under § 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act of *4601947, 61 Stat. 156, 29 U. S. C. § 185, seeking specific enforcement of the arbitration provisions of a collective-bargaining contract. The District Court had jurisdiction over the action since it involved an obligation running to a union — a union controversy — and not uniquely personal rights of employees sought to be enforced by a union. Cf. Association of Westinghouse Employees v. Westinghouse Elec. Corp., 348 U. S. 437. Having jurisdiction over the suit, the court was not powerless to fashion an appropriate federal remedy. The power to decree specific performance of a collectively bargained agreement to arbitrate finds its source in § 301 itself,1 and in a Federal District Court’s inherent equitable powers, nurtured by a congressional policy to encourage and enforce labor arbitration in industries affecting commerce.2
I do not subscribe to the conclusion of the Court that the substantive law to be applied in a suit under § 301 is federal law. At the same time, I agree with Judge Magruder in International Brotherhood v. W. L. Mead, Inc., 230 F. 2d 576, that some federal rights may necessarily be involved in a § 301 case, and hence that the constitutionality of § 301 can be upheld as a congressional grant to Federal District Courts of what has been called “protective jurisdiction.”

 See the dissent of Judge Brown in the Court of Appeals in this case, 230 F. 2d 81, 89.