Court Opinion

ID: 9427029
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:19:29.934339+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:04.583533
License: Public Domain

Mr. Chief Justice Burger,
with whom Mr. Justice Powell and Mr. Justice Rehnquist join,
dissenting.
The Court today holds that foreign nations are entitled to bring treble-damages actions in American courts against American suppliers for alleged violations of the antitrust laws; the Court reaches this extraordinary result by holding that for purposes of § 4 of the Clayton Act, foreign sovereigns are “persons,” while conceding paradoxically that the question “was never considered at the time the Sherman and Clayton Acts were enacted.” Ante, at 312.
I dissent from this undisguised exercise of legislative power, since I find the result plainly at odds not only with the language of the statute but also with its legislative history and precedents of this Court. The resolution of the delicate and *321important policy issue of giving more than 150 foreign countries the benefits and remedies enacted to protect American consumers should be left to the Congress and the Executive. Congressional silence over a period of almost a century provides no license for the Court to make this sensitive political decision vastly expanding the scope of the statute Congress enacted.
A
“The starting point in every case involving construction of a statute is the language itself.” Blue Chip Stamps v. Manor Drug Stores, 421 U. S. 723, 756 (1975) (Powell, J., concurring). The relevant provisions here are § 1 of the Clayton Act in which the word “person” is defined, and § 4 in which the treble-damages remedy is conferred on those falling within the precisely enumerated categories. Section 1 provides, in relevant part:
“The word ‘person’ or ‘persons’ wherever used in this Act shall be deemed to include corporations and associations existing under or authorized by the laws of either the United States, the laws of any of the Territories, the laws of any State, or the laws of any foreign country.”
Section 4 then incorporates this definition by providing:
“That any person who shall be injured in his business or property by reason of anything forbidden in the antitrust laws may sue therefor in any district court of the United States in the district in which the defendant resides or is found or has an agent, without respect to the amount in controversy, and shall recover threefold the damages by him sustained, and the cost of suit, including a reasonable attorney’s fee.”
Even on the most expansive reading, these two sections provide not the slightest indication that Congress intended to allow foreign nations to sue Americans for treble damages under our antitrust laws. The very fact that foreign sover*322eigns were not included within the definition of “person” despite the explicit reference to corporations and associations existing under the “laws of any foreign country” in the same definition ought to be dispositive under established doctrine governing interpretation of statutes. I therefore see no escape from the conclusion that the omission by Congress of foreign nations was deliberate.
The inclusion of foreign corporations within the statutory definition in no sense argues for a different characterization of Congress’ intent. At the time of the passage of both the Sherman and Clayton Acts, foreign sovereigns, even when acting in their commercial capacities, were immune from suits in the courts of this country under the doctrine of sovereign immunity. See The Schooner Exchange v. McFaddon, 7 Cranch 116 (1812); Ex parte Peru, 318 U. S. 578 (1943); Mexico v. Huffman, 324 U. S. 30 (1945). Foreign corporations, of course, had no such immunity. See, e. g., Shaw v. Quincy Mining Co., 145 U. S. 444, 453 (1892); In re Hohorst, 150 U. S. 653, 662-663 (1893). Given that “person” as used in the Clayton and Sherman Acts refers to both antitrust plaintiffs and defendants, see United States v. Cooper Corp., 312 U. S. 600, 606 (1941), the decision of Congress to include foreign corporations while omitting foreign sovereigns from the definition most likely reflects this differential susceptibility to suit rather than any intent to benefit foreign consumers or to enlist their help in enforcing our antitrust laws. It would be little short of preposterous to think that Congress in 1890 was concerned about giving such rights to foreign nations, even though it might well decide to do so now.
Respondents’ claim that this disparate treatment cannot be justified today when foreign states effectively control many large foreign corporations and when sovereign immunity has been limited by the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976, Pub. L. 94-583, 90 Stat. 2891, is not an argument appropriately addressed to or considered by this Court. If *323revisions in the statute are required to take into account contemporary circumstances, that task is properly one for Congress particularly in light of the sensitive political nature and foreign policy implications of the question.
The Court’s reliance on the references to “foreign nations” in §§ 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act and § 1 of the Clayton Act to support an argument that Congress was specifically concerned with foreign commerce and foreign nations in 1890 when the disputed definition was enacted is similarly unavailing. As a threshold matter, congressional concern with the foreign commerce of the United States does not entail either a desire to protect foreign nations or a willingness to allow them to sue Americans for treble damages in our courts. The Webb-Pomerene Act, ch. 50, 40 Stat. 516, as amended, 15 U. S. C. § 61 et seg., passed within only a few years of the Clayton Act, indicates that such a concern may instead be served at the expense of foreign states and consumers.1
In any event, the relevant language of §§ 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act, as subsequently incorporated in the Clayton Act, does not support respondents’ contention. The reference to “commerce . . . with foreign nations” appeared only in the final draft of the Act as reported by the Senate Judiciary Committee, and replaced language in the numerous earlier drafts of Senator Sherman to the following effect:
“That all arrangements, contracts, agreements, trusts, or combinations between persons or corporations made *324with a view or which tend to prevent full and free competition in the production, manufacture, or sale of articles of domestic growth or production, or of the sale of articles imported, into the United States, . . . are hereby declared to be against public policy, unlawful and void . . . 21 Cong. Rec. 2598 (1890) (first draft) (emphasis added).2
The focus of this language on protecting domestic consumers from anticompetitive practices affecting the importation of goods into the United States could not be more clear, nor could the absence of any attention to affording comparable protection for foreign consumers of American exports. The language substituted by the Judiciary Committee — language tracking that appearing in the Commerce Clause — was chosen to mollify the objections of those Senators who felt the proposed statute exceeded Congress’ constitutional power to regulate commerce, see, e. g., id., at 2600, 3147 (remarks of Sen. George); id., at 2728 (remarks of Sen. Edmunds); id., at 3149 (remarks of Sen. Reagan); cf. Apex Hosiery Co. v. Leader, 310 U. S. 469, 495 (1940); Atlantic Cleaners & Dyers, Inc. v. United States, 286 U. S. 427, 434-435 (1932); that language was not intended to work any substantive change in the focus or scope of the Act. See United States v. Wise, 370 U. S. 405, 420 (1962) (Harlan, J., concurring). To read this language as evidencing an intent to protect foreign nations or foreign consumers simply belies its lineage.
B
The legislative history of the treble-damages remedy gives no more support to the result reached by the Court than does the language of the statute. As five of the eight judges of the Court of Appeals concluded — and indeed as the majority here concedes, ante, at 312 — “Congress, in passing § 4 of the Clayton Act, 15 U. S. C. § 15, gave no consideration nor did *325it have any legislative intent whatsoever, concerning the question of whether foreign governments are ‘persons’ under the Act.” 550 F. 2d 396, 399 (Ross, J., concurring) (emphasis added). The conversion of this silence in 1890 into an affirmative intent in 1978 is indeed startling.
The failure of Congress even to consider the question of granting treble-damages remedies to foreign nations provides the clearest possible argument for leaving the question to the same political process that gave birth to the Sherman and Clayton Acts. To rely on the absence of any express congressional intent to exclude foreign nations from taking advantage of the treble-damages remedy is a remarkable innovation in statutory interpretation. It is a strange way to camouflage the unassailable conclusion that the legislative history offers no affirmative support for the result reached today. Further, as this Court observed just last Term, the legislative history of the treble-damages remedy which does exist “indicate [s] that it was conceived of primarily as a remedy for ‘[t]he people of the United States as individuals/ especially consumers.” Brunswick Corp. v. Pueblo Bowl-O-Mat, Inc., 429 U. S. 477, 486 n. 10 (1977), quoting from 21 Cong. Rec. 1767-1768 (1890) (remarks of Sen. George). What we so recently saw as primarily a remedy for American consumers is now extended to all the nations of the world — a boon Congress might choose to grant but has not done so.
C
In the absence of any helpful language in the statute or any affirmative legislative history, the Court attempts to base its expansive reading of “person” on Mr. Justice Frankfurter’s decision in Georgia v. Evans, 316 U. S. 159 (1942), granting the State of Georgia and all other domestic States the right to sue for treble damages. I fail to see how that result dictates this one.
In Georgia v. Evans, Mr. Justice Frankfurter concluded that absent the right to sue for treble damages, our States would *326be left without any remedy against violators of the antitrust laws. The Court today analogizes the situation of foreign nations to that of the States in Evans, and finds the analogy dispositive. When viewed solely in terms of the remedies specifically provided by the antitrust laws, the plight of domestic States and foreign sovereigns may, in this limited respect, be roughly comparable. But the very limited scope of the inquiry in Evans precludes consideration of the manifold and patently obvious respects in which foreign nations and our own domestic States differ — cogent differences bearing on the question under consideration here, though obviously not at all on the Court’s inquiry in Evans.
First, the disparate treatment of foreign and domestic States is a legitimate source of concern only on the assumption that Congress in passing the Sherman Act intended — or even contemplated — that these two categories of political entities were so essentially alike that they were entitled to the same remedies against anticompetitive conduct. As I have already suggested, this assumption derives no support from either the statutory language or anything in the legislative history. Although our own States were also not the expressly intended beneficiaries of the Act, to deny them the treble-damages remedy would, as Mr. Justice Frankfurter perceived, have the unmistakable result of effectively denying surrogate protection to American citizens in whose behalf the State acts and for whose benefit the Sherman Act was enacted. Thus, while the result in Evans is a tolerable talcing of certain liberties with the literal language of the statute, the congruence of that result with Congress’ purpose can scarcely be doubted. This same logic, however, does not even remotely apply to the situation of foreign nations.
Second, it simply is not the case that absent a treble-damages remedy, foreign nations would be denied any effective means of redress against anticompetitive practices by American corporations. Unlike our own States, whose freedom of action in this regard is constrained by the Commerce and Supremacy *327Clauses, foreign sovereigns remain free to enact and enforce their own comprehensive antitrust statutes and to impose other more drastic sanctions on offending corporations. One need look no further than the laws of respondents India and the Philippines for evidence that such remedies are possessed by foreign nations. And indeed, amicus West Germany has demonstrated that such laws are not mere idle enactments. During the pendency of this action, it notified petitioner Pfizer that a proceeding under German antitrust law was being commenced involving some of the same allegations which are made in the complaint filed by respondents in their treble-damages actions in this country.
While problems of jurisdiction and discovery may render antitrust actions against foreign defendants somewhat more problematic than a suit against a corporation in its own country, the limited experience of the Common Market nations in applying their antitrust laws to foreign corporations suggests that such difficulties are certainly not insoluble and are likely exaggerated. See, e. g., Europemballage Corp. v. E. C. Commission, 12 Comm. Mkt. L. R. 199 (1973); Commercial Solvents Corp. v. E. C. Commission, 13 Comm. Mkt. L. R. 309 (1974). And, as the presently existing treaty between the United States and West Germany indicates, reciprocal agreements providing for cooperation in antitrust investigations undertaken by foreign nations are an effective means of mitigating the rigors of discovery in foreign jurisdictions. See Agreement Relating to Mutual Cooperation Regarding Restrictive Business Practices, entered into force Sept. 11, 1976. United States — Federal Republic of Germany, [1976] 27 U. S. T. 1956, T. I. A. S. No. 8291.
Third, it takes little imagination to realize the dramatic and very real differences in terms of coercive economic power and political interests which distinguish our own States from foreign sovereigns. The international price fixing, boycotts, and other current anticompetitive practices undertaken by some Middle Eastern nations are illustrative of the weapons *328in the arsenals of foreign nations which no domestic State could ever employ. Nor do our domestic States, in any meaningful sense, have the conflicting economic interests or antagonistic ideologies which characterize and enliven the relations among nation states.
Viewed in this light, it is clear that the decision to allow foreign sovereigns to seek treble damages from Americans and to rely on standards of competitive behavior in fixing liability which those- very same nations flout in their business relationships with this country is a decision dramatically different from the one Mr. Justice Frankfurter faced in Evans. To consider the result reached there as to Georgia determinative of the result here is to substitute a “hard and fast rule of inclusion” for the “hard and fast rule of exclusion” which Justices Frankfurter and Roberts eschewed in Evans and Cooper, respectively. Only the most mechanical reading of our prior precedent will justify such a result.
Further, the result reached by the Court today confronts us with the anomaly that while the United States Government cannot sue for treble damages under our antitrust laws, other nations are free to engage in the most flagrant kinds of combinations for price fixing, totally at odds with our antitrust concepts, and nevertheless are given the right by the Court to sue American suppliers in American courts for treble damages plus attorneys’ fees. It is no answer to say that the United States needs no civil treble-damages remedy since it has reserved for itself the power to pursue criminal remedies against American suppliers for antitrust violations. What that response overlooks is that our criminal antitrust remedies hardly compare with the infinite array of political and commercial weapons available to a foreign nation for use against the United States itself or against American producers and suppliers. This, again, underscores how completely the problem is a matter of policy to be resolved by the political branches without the intrusion of the Judiciary.
*329D
Finally, the Court's emphasis oil the deterrent effects of treble-damages actions by foreign sovereigns also will not withstand critical scrutiny. We acknowledged in Brunswick Corp. v. Pueblo Bowl-O-Mat, Inc., 429 U. S., at 485-486, that while treble damages do play an important role in deterring wrongdoers, “the treble-damages provision ... is designed primarily as a remedy.” To allow foreign sovereigns who were clearly not the intended beneficiaries of this remedy to nevertheless invoke it reverses this priority of purposes, and does so solely on the basis of this Court’s uninformed speculation about some possible beneficial consequences to American consumers of this “maximum deterrent.” Ante, at 315. In areas of far less political delicacy, we have been unwilling to expand the scope of the right to sue under the antitrust laws without express congressional intent to do so. See, e. g., Hawaii v. Standard Oil Co., 405 U. S. 251, 264-265 (1972).3
For these reasons I dissent from the Court’s intrusion into the legislative sphere.

 The Webb-Pomerene Act exempts certain actions of export associations from the antitrust laws, but the exemption applies only if the association’s actions do not restrain trade or affect the price of exported products within the United States and do not restrain the export trade of any domestic competitor of the association. 15 U. S. C. § 62. Although the Act was subsequently regarded as carving out an exemption from the antitrust laws, the legislative history indicates considerable question at the time whether the conduct of exporters meeting the conditions specified in the Act would have violated the antitrust laws even without the putative exemption. See H. R. Rep. No. 50, 65th Cong., 1st Sess., 2 (1917).

 The equivalent language of subsequent drafts can be found at 21 Cong. Rec. 2598-2600 (1890).

 The Court adverts to a letter from the Legal Adviser of the State Department to the Court of Appeals advising that no foreign policy problems were anticipated from a decision holding foreign governments to be persons within the meaning of § 4 of the Clayton Act. The significance of this communication escapes me. Nothing in the Constitution suggests legislative power may be exercised jointly by the courts and the Department of State.