Court Opinion

ID: 9644069
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 20:47:45.875626+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:08.355549
License: Public Domain

L. HAND, Circuit judge
’(dissenting).
As I read my brothers’ opinion, it is based upon the premise that, even if there be any judicial review of the propriety of taking property for “public use,” the extent of what is taken, and the time for which it is taken, are solely for the executive authorities — in this case for the Secretary of War. I should agree with that statement, and my difference with them has no foundation, unless I am right in thinking that we are concerned here with a second “public use,” altogether separate from that for which the property was originally taken. I should agree therefore that Judge Bryant’s decision in 1943 was right: it was made, flagrante bello, when the national need was not to be denied, even though it conflicted with the very Constitution of the State. Moreover, the time had no) yet arrived to challenge the claim to continued possession for fifteen years after the war was over. Now, however, hostilities have ended, the imperious national needs have ended with them, and the “public use” which is said to justify the continued operation of the railroad is to get the greatest salvage for the Treasury, which no doubt will be by a sale for the full term. I submit that we should not dispose of that issue as though it coalesced with the national interest at stake when the property was originally taken.
*482The discussion of the court in United States v. Carmack,1 at least strongly implies that United States ex rel. Tennessee Valley Authority v. Welch,2 did not change the law by removing from all judicial review the “public use” for which the property may be taken. I find it hard to believe that any such radical step was intended; nor do I understand that my brothers think that it was. If so, there is an issue to be determined which arose only when the State moved for the rehearing: i. e., whether, hostilities having ceased, it was an “arbitrary” act to continue possession and operation of the railroad for the purpose of realizing the most salvage. I do not of course mean that it can never be a “public use” to save money for the United States ;3 but in deciding whether a taking has been “arbitrary” more is always involved, I apprehend, than whether the United States has any interest whatever to be subserved. As in the case of substantially every right, the result depends upon a compromise between two conflicting interests; what we mean is that the disparity between the contrasted values must not be shockingly against the proposed action. That does demand an appraisal of the two interests; but in thousands of cases that is just what courts must do, though often they seek to veil it. This is not the ordinary case; we have not to deal with a conflict between the Treasury and the pecuniary interests of an individual or a number of individuals, but between the Treasury and the settled wishes of a State of thirteen million people which for many years has declared in the most formal way possible that its forests shall be inviolate. I should not indeed decide either way upon this record; but it does seem to me that the evidence should be developed at a trial, at which the court can learn what is at stake. We are disposing of it summarily, and, although summary disposition has of course its place, it is most important that we should keep it in that place.4 I can think of few instances to which I should less willingly extend it than this.

 329 U.S. 230, 67 S.Ct. 252.

 327 U.S. 546, 66 S.Ct. 715.

 Old Dominion Co. v. United States, 269 U.S. 55, 46 S.Ct. 39, 70 L.Ed. 162.

 Doehler Metal Furniture Co. v. United States, 2 Cir., 149 F.2d 130, 135; Arnstein v. Porter, 2 Cir., 154 F.2d 464, 468.