Court Opinion

ID: 9425687
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:15:27.274223+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:56.992037
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Brennan,
with whom Mr. Justice Douglas, Mr. Justice White, and Mr. Justice Marshall concur,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. Many weeks of the school term remain, and petitioner may not receive his degree despite respondents’ assurances that petitioner will be allowed to complete this term’s schooling regardless of our decision. Any number of unexpected events — illness, economic necessity, even academic failure — might prevent his graduation at the end of the term.' Were that misfortune.- to befall, and were petitioner required to register for yet-another term, the prospect that he would again face the hurdle of the admissions policy is real, not fanciful ; for respondents warn that “Mr. DeFunis would have to take.some appropriate action to request continued ad'-mission for the remainder of his law school education, and some discretionary action by the University on such request would have to be taken.” Respondents’ Memorandum on the Question of Mootness 3-4 (emphasis supplied). Thus, respondents’ assurances have not dissipated the possibility that petitioner might once again have to run the gantlet of the University’s allegedly unlawful admissions policy. The Court therefore proceeds on an erroneous premise in resting its mootness holding on a supposed inability to render any judgment that may affect one way or the other petitioner’s completion of his law studies. For surely if we were to reverse the Washington Supreme Court, we could insure that, if for some reason petitioner did not graduate this spring, he would be entitled to re-enrollment at a later time on the same basis as others who have not faced the hurdle of the University’s allegedly unlawful admissions policy.
*349In these circumstances, and because the University’s position implies no concession that its admissions policy is unlawful, this controversy falls squarely within the Court’s, long line of decisions holding that the “[m]ere voluntary cessation of allegedly illegal conduct does not moot a case.” United States v. Phosphate Export Assn., 393 U. S. 199, 203 (1968); see Gray v. Sanders, 372 U. S. 368 (1963); United States v. W. T. Grant Co., 345 U. S. 629 (1953); Walling v. Helmerich & Payne, Inc., 323 U. S. 37 (1944); FTC v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., 304 U. S. 257 (1938); United States v. Trans-Missouri Freight Assn., 166 U. S. 290 (1897). Since respondents’, voluntary representation to this Court is only that they will permit petitioner to complete this term’s studies, respondents have not borne the “heavy burden,” United States v. Phosphate Export Assn., supra, at 203, of demonstrating that there was not even a “mere .possibility” that petitioner would once again be subject to the challenged admissions policy. United States v. W. T. Grant Co., supra, at 633. On the contrary, respondents have positioned themselves so as to be “free to return to [their] old ways.” Id., at 632.
I can thus find no justification for the Court’s straining to rid itself of this dispute.. While we must be vigilant-to require that litigants maintain a personal stake in the outcome of a controversy to assure that “the questions will be framed with the necessary specificity, that the issues will be contested with the necessary adverseness and that the litigation will be pursued with the necessary vigor to assure that the constitutional challenge will-be made in a form traditionally thought to be capable of judicial resolution,” Flast v. Cohen, 392 U. S. 83, 106, (1968), there is no want of an adversary contest in this . case. Indeed, the Court concedes that, if petitioner- has lost his stake in this controversy, he did so only when he *350registered for the spring term. But petitioner took that action only after the case had been fuliy litigated in the state courts, briefs had been filed in this Court, and oral argument had been heard. The case is thus ripe for decision on a fully developed factual record with sharply defined and fully canvassed legal issues; Cf. Sibron v. New York, 392 U. S. 40, 57 (1968).
Moreover, in endeavoring to dispose of this case as moot, the Court clearly disserves the public interest. The constitutional issues which are avoided today concern vast numbers of people, organizations, and colleges and universities, as evidenced by the filing of twenty-six amicus curiae briefs. New constitutional questions in recent history have stirred as much debate, and they will not disappear. They must inevitably return to the federal courts and ultimately again to this Court. Cf. Richardson v. Wright, 405 U. S. 208, 212 (1972) (dissenting opinion). Because avoidance of repetitious litigation serves the .public interest, that inevitability counsels against mootness determinations, as here, not compelled by the record. Cf. United States v. W. T. Grant Co., supra, at 632; Parker v. Ellis, 362 U. S. 574, 594 (1960) (dissenting opinion). Although the Court 'should, of course, avoid unnecessary decisions of constitutional questions, we should not transform principles of avoidance of constitutional decisions into devices for sidestepping resolution of difficult cases.. Cf. Cohens v. Virginia, Q Wheat. 264, 404-405 (1821) (Marshall, C. J.).
On what áppears in this case, I would find that there is an extant controversy and decide the merits of the very important constitutional questions presented.