Court Opinion

ID: 9425179
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:13:59.814409+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:53.885468
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Blackmun,
concurring.
I join the Court’s opinion. I readily concede that my visceral reaction to immaturely conceived acts of violence of the kind charged in this indictment is that such acts deserve to be dignified as federal crimes. That reaction on my part, however, is legislative in nature rather than judicial. If Congress wishes acts of that kind to be encompassed by a federal statute, it has the constitutional power in the interstate context to effect that result. The appellees so concede. Tr. of Oral Arg. 18-19. But Mr. Justice Stewart has gathered the pertinent and persuasive legislative history demonstrating that Congress did not intend to exercise its power to reach these acts of violence.
The Government’s posture, with its concession that certain strike violence (which it would downgrade as “incidental” and the dissent as “low level,” post, at 418 n. 17), although aimed at achieving a legitimate end, is not covered by the Act, necessarily means that the legislation would be enforced selectively or, at the least, would embroil all concerned with drawing the distinction between major and minor violence. That, for me, is neither an appealing prospect nor solid support for the position taken.
This type of violence, as the Court points out, is subject to state criminal prosecution. That is where it must remain until the Congress acts otherwise in a manner far more clear than the language of the Hobbs Act.