Court Opinion

ID: 9426978
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:19:21.740285+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:04.237634
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Stevens,
with whom Mr. Justice Brennan, Mr. Justice White, and Mr. Justice Marshall join, dissenting.
Quite properly, the plurality does not question the merits of the preliminary injunction entered by the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois staying proceedings in the Illinois courts. It was predicated on appropriate findings of fact,1 it was entered by a District Judge whose *646understanding of the federal antitrust laws was unique,2 and its entry was affirmed unanimously by the Court of Appeals.
Judge McLaren found substantial evidence that petitioner intended to monopolize the relevant market; that one of the overt acts performed in furtherance thereof was the use of litigation as a method of harassing and eliminating competition ; that two of the corporate plaintiffs in the case, respondents here, would be eliminated by collection of the Illinois judgment; and that the state litigation had already severely hampered, and collection of the judgment would prevent, the marketing of a promising, newly developed machine which would compete with petitioner’s products. 403 F. Supp. 527, 534—535, 538 (1975).3 The Court of Appeals implicitly endorsed these findings when it noted that “[h]ere Vendo seeks to thwart a federal antitrust suit by the enforcement of state court judgments which are alleged to be the very object of antitrust violations.” 545 F. 2d 1050, 1057 (CA7 1976).
The question which is therefore presented is whether the *647anti-injunction statute4 deprives the federal courts of power to stay state-court litigation which is being prosecuted in direct violation of the Sherman Act. I cannot believe that any of the members of Congress who unanimously enacted that basic charter of economic freedom.5 in 1890 would have answered that question the way the plurality does today.
I
The plurality relies on the present form of a provision of the Judiciary Act of 1793.6 In the ensuing century, there were changes in our economy which persuaded the Congress that the state courts could not adequately deal with contracts in restraint of trade that affected commerce in more than one *648jurisdiction.7 The Sherman Act was enacted virtually unanimously in 1890 to protect the national economy from the pernicious effects of regulation by private cartel and to vest the fed*649eral courts with jurisdiction adequate to “exert such remedies as would fully accomplish the purposes intended.”8
Between 1890 and 1914, although private litigants could *650recover treble damages, only the United States could invoke the jurisdiction of the federal courts to prevent and restrain violations of the Sherman Act.9 When Congress authorized the federal courts to grant injunctive relief in private antitrust litigation, it conferred the same broad powers that the courts possess in cases brought by the Government.10 Section *65116 of the Clayton Act expressly authorizes injunctions against “a violation of the antitrust laws.”11
The scope of the jurisdictional grant is just as broad as the definition of a violation of the antitrust laws. That definition was deliberately phrased in general language to be sure that “every conceivable act which could possibly come within *652the spirit or purpose of the prohibition” would be covered by the statute, regardless of whether or not the particular form of restraint was actually foreseen by Congress.12 In the decades following the formulation of the Rule of Reason in 1911, this Court has made it perfectly clear that the prosecution of litigation in a state court may itself constitute a form of violation of the federal statute.
Thus, the attempt to enforce a patent obtained by fraud,13 or a patent known to be invalid for other reasons,14 may constitute an independent violation of the Sherman Act; and such litigation may be brought in a state court.15 The prosecution of frivolous claims and objections before regulatory bodies, including state agencies, may violate the antitrust laws.16 The enforcement of restrictive provisions in a license to use a patent or a trademark17 may violate the Sherman Act; such enforcement may, of course, be sought in the state courts. Similarly, the provisions of a lease,18 or a fair trade *653agreement19 may become the focus of enforcement litigation which has a purpose or effect of frustrating rights guaranteed by the antitrust laws, either in a state or federal court.20 Indeed, the enforcement of a covenant not to compete — the classic example of a contract in restraint of trade — typically takes place in a state court.21
These examples are sufficient to demonstrate that “litigation hi state courts may constitute an antitrust violation . . . ante, at 635 n. 6. Since the judicial construction of a statute is as much a part of the law as the words written by the legislature, the illegal use of state-court litigation as a method of monopolizing or restraining trade is as plainly a violation of the antitrust laws as if Congress had specifically described each of the foregoing cases as an independent *654violation. The language in § 16 of the Clayton Act which expressly authorizes injunctions against violations of the antitrust laws is therefore applicable to this species of violation as well as to other kinds of violations.,
Since § 16 of the Clayton Act is an Act of Congress which expressly authorizes an injunction against a state-court proceeding which violates the antitrust laws, the plain language of the anti-injunction statute excepts this kind of injunction from its coverage.22
II
There is nothing in this Court’s precedents which is even arguably inconsistent with this rather obvious reading of the statutory language.23 On at least three occasions the Court *655has held that general grants of federal jurisdiction which make no mention of either state-court proceedings, or of the anti-injunction statute, are within the “expressly authorized” exception. Providence & N. Y. S. S. Co. v. Hill Mfg. Co., 109 U. S. 578, 599-601; 24 Porter v. Dicken, 328 U. S. 252;25 Mitchum v. Foster, 407 U. S. 225.
*656In Mitchum the Court made it clear that a statute may come within the “expressly authorized” exception to § 2283 even though it does not mention the anti-injunction statute or contain any reference to state-court proceedings, provided that it creates a uniquely federal right or remedy that could be frustrated if the federal court were not empowered to enjoin the state proceeding.26 The Court then formulated and applied this test: “The test ... is whether an Act of Congress, clearly creating a federal right or remedy enforceable in a federal court of equity, could be given its intended scope only by the stay of a state court proceeding.” 407 U. S., at 238.
Section 16 of the Clayton Act created a federal remedy which can only be given its intended scope if it includes the power to stay state-court proceedings in appropriate *657cases. As one of the sponsors of the statute explained, under “this most excellent provision a man does not have to wait until he is ruined in his business before he has his remedy.” 27 But if the plurality’s interpretation of the legislation were correct, a private litigant might indeed be “ruined in his business before he has his remedy” against state-court litigation seeking enforcement of an invalid patent, a covenant not to compete, or an executory merger agreement, to take only a few obvious examples of antitrust violations that might be consummated by state-court litigation.
The plurality assumes that Congress intended to distinguish between illegal state proceedings which are already pending and those which have not yet been filed at the time of a federal court’s determination that a violation of the antitrust laws has been consummated; the federal court may enjoin the latter, but is powerless to restrain the former. See ante, at 635-636, n. 6. Nothing in the history of the anti-injunction statute suggests any such logic-chopping distinction.28 Indeed, it is squarely at odds with Senator Sherman’s own explanation of the intended scope of the statutory power “to issue all remedial process or writs proper and necessary to enforce its provisions . . . .”29 It would demean the legislative *658process to construe the eloquent rhetoric which accompanied the enactment of the antitrust laws as implicitly denying federal courts the power to restrain illegal state-court litigation simply because it was filed before the federal case was concluded.30 A faithful application of the rationale of Mitchum v. Foster requires a like result in this case.
Ill
The plurality expresses the fear that if the Clayton Act is given its intended scope, the anti-injunction statute “would be completely eviscerated” since there are 26 other federal statutes which may also be within the “expressly authorized” exception. Ante, at 636-637, n. 7. That fear, stated in its strongest terms, is that in the 184 years since the anti-injunction statute was originally enacted, there are 26 occasions on which Congress has qualified its prohibition to some extent. There are at least three reasons why this argument should not cause panic.
First, the early history of the anti-injunction statute indicates that it was primarily intended to prevent the federal courts from exercising a sort of appellate review function in litigation in which the state and federal courts had equal competence. The statute imposed a limitation on the general equity powers of the federal courts which existed in 1793, and which have been exercised subsequently in diversity *659and other private litigation. But the anti-injunction statute has seldom, if ever, been construed to interfere with a federal court’s power to implement federal policy pursuant to an express statutory grant of federal jurisdiction.31 Although there is no need to resolve the question in this case, I must confess that I am not now persuaded that the concept of federalism is necessarily inconsistent with the view that the 1793 Act should be considered wholly inapplicable to- later enacted federal statutes that are enforceable exclusively in federal litigation.32 If a fair reading of the jurisdictional grant in any such statute does authorize an injunction against state-court litigation frustrating the federal policy, nothing in our prior cases would foreclose the conclusion that it is within the “expressly authorized” exception to § 2283.
Second, in any event, the question whether the Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921, for example, gives the federal court the power to enjoin state litigation has little, if any, relevance to the issues presented by this case. Whatever the answer to that question may be,33 that 56-year-old statute will not exacerbate federal-state relations and jeopardize the vitality of “our federalism.” Indeed, even if all the statutes identified by the plurality are within the “expressly authorized” exception to § 2283, it is extremely doubtful that they would generate as much, or as significant, litigation as either *660the Civil Rights Act of 1871 or the antitrust laws.34 The answer to the important question presented by this case should not depend on speculation about potential consequences for other statutes of relatively less importance to the economy and the Nation.
Third, concern about the Court’s ability either to enlarge or to contain the exceptions to the anti-injunction statute, ante, at 635-639, is disingenuous at best. As originally enacted in 1793, the statute contained no express exception at all. Those few that were recognized in the ensuing century and a half were the product of judicial interpretation of the statute’s prohibition in concrete situations. The codification of the Judicial Code in 1948 restated the exceptions in statutory language, but was not intended to modify the Court’s power to accommodate the terms of the statute to- overriding expressions of national policy embodied in statutes like the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 or the Sherman Act of 1890.35
IV
Since the votes of The Chief Justice and Mr. Justice Blackmun are decisive, a separate comment on Mr. Justice Blackmun’s opinion concurring in the result is required.
His agreement with the proposition that an injunction properly entered pursuant to § 16 of the Clayton Act is within the “expressly authorized” exception to the anti-injunction statute establishes that proposition as the law for the future. *661His view that § 16 did not authorize the preliminary injunction entered by Judge McLaren is dispositive of this litigation but, for reasons which may be briefly summarized, is not a view that finds any support in the law.
Unlike the plurality, which would draw a distinction between ongoing litigation and future litigation, ante, at 635-636, n. 6, Mr. Justice Blackmun differentiates between a violation committed by a multiplicity of lawsuits and a violation involving only one lawsuit. The very case on which he relies rejects that distinction. In California Motor Transport Co. v. Trucking Unlimited, 404 U. S. 508, 512-513, the Court stated:
“Yet unethical conduct in the setting of the adjudicatory process often results in sanctions. Perjury of witnesses is one example. Use of a patent obtained by fraud to exclude a competitor from the market may involve a violation of the antitrust laws, as we held in Walker Process Equipment v. Food Machinery & Chemical Corp., 382 U. S. 172, 175-177. Conspiracy with a licensing authority to eliminate a competitor may also result in an antitrust transgression. Continental Ore Co. v. Union Carbide & Carbon Corp., 370 U. S. 690, 707; Harman v. Valley National Bank, 339 F. 2d 564 (CA9 1964). Similarly, -bribery of a public purchasing agent may constitute a violation of § 2 (c) of the Clayton Act, as amended by the Robinson-Patman Act. Rangen, Inc. v. Sterling Nelson & Sons, 351 F. 2d 851 (CA9 1965).
“There are many other forms of illegal and reprehensible practice which may corrupt the administrative or judicial processes and which may result in antitrust violations.”
Each of the examples given in this excerpt from the California Motor Transport opinion involves a single use of the adjudicatory process to violate the antitrust laws. *662Manifestly, when Mr. Justice Douglas wrote for the Court in that case and described “a pattern of baseless, repetitive claims,” id., at 513, as an illustration of an antitrust violation, he did not thereby circumscribe the category to that one example. Nothing in his opinion even remotely implies that there would be any less reason to enjoin the “[u]se of a patent obtained by fraud to exclude a competitor from the market,” id., at 512, for example, than to enjoin the particular violation before the Court in that case.
In this case we are reviewing the affirmance by the Court of Appeals of an order granting a preliminary injunction. Affirmance was required unless the "exercise of the District Court’s discretion was clearly erroneous. And when both the District Court and the Court of Appeals are in agreement, the scope of review in this Court is even more narrow, Faulkner v. Gibbs, 338 U. S. 267, 268; United States v. Dickinson, 331 U. S. 745, 751; Allen v. Trust Co., 326 U. S. 630, 636. Without the most careful review of the record, and the findings and conclusions of the District Court, it is most inappropriate for this Court to reverse on the basis of a contrary view of the facts of the particular case.
The mere fact that the Illinois courts concluded that petitioner’s state-law claim was meritorious does not disprove the existence of a serious federal antitrust violation. For if it did, invalid patents, price-fixing agreements, and other illegal covenants in restraint of trade would be enforceable in state courts no matter how blatant the violation of federal law.
V
Apart from the anti-injunction statute, petitioner has argued that principles of equity, comity, and federalism create a bar to injunctive relief in this case. Brief for Petitioner 36-39. This argument is supported by three facts: The Illinois litigation was pending for a period of nine years; the Illinois Supreme Court concluded that respondents were guilty of *663a breach of fiduciary duty; and respondents withdrew their antitrust defense from the state action.
Unfortunately, in recent years long periods of delay have been a characteristic of litigation in the Illinois courts. That is not a reason for a federal court to show any special deference to state courts; quite the contrary, it merely emphasizes the seriousness of any decision by a federal court to abstain, on grounds of federalism, from the prompt decision of a federal question.
The Illinois Supreme Court’s conclusion that respondents had violated a fiduciary obligation and that petitioner was entitled to a large. damages recovery rested on that court’s appraisal of the legality of a covenant in restraint of trade.36 The fact that the covenant not to compete is valid as a matter of state law is irrelevant to the federal antitrust issue. If, for example, instead of a contract totally excluding respondents from the relevant market, the parties had agreed on a lesser restraint which merely required respondents to sell at prices fixed by petitioner, the Illinois court might also have concluded that respondents were bound by the contract even though the federal courts would have found it plainly violative of the Sherman Act. The Illinois decision on the merits merely highlights the fact that state and federal courts apply significantly different standards in evaluating contracts in restraint of trade.37
*664That fact provides the explanation for respondents’ decision to withdraw their federal antitrust defense from the. Illinois litigation and to present it to the federal courts. Congress has granted the federal courts exclusive jurisdiction over the prosecution of private antitrust litigation.38 Since the state courts do not have the power to award complete relief for an antitrust violation, since state judges are unfamiliar with the complexities of this area of the law, and since state procedures are sometimes unsatisfactory for cases of nationwide scope, no adverse inference should be drawn from a state-court defendant’s election to reserve his federal antitrust claim for decision by a federal court.
Indeed, since these respondents made that election, and since Congress has withheld jurisdiction of antitrust claims from the state courts, the plurality properly ignores the argument that principles of federalism require abstention in this case. For a ruling requiring the federal court to abstain from *665the decision of an antitrust issue that might have been raised in a state-court proceeding would be tantamount to holding that the federal defense must be asserted in the state action. Such a holding could not be reconciled with the congressional decision to confer exclusive jurisdiction of the private enforcement of the antitrust laws on the federal courts. Quite plainly, therefore, this is not the kind of case in which abstention is even arguably proper.
When principles of federalism are invoked to defend a violation of the Sherman Act, one is inevitably reminded of the fundamental issue that was resolved only a few years before the anti-injunction statute was passed. Perhaps more than any other provision in the Constitution, it was the Commerce Clause that transformed the ineffective coalition created by the Articles of Confederation into a great Nation.
“It was ... to secure freedom of trade, to break down the barriers to its free flow, that the Annapolis Convention was called, only to adjourn with a view to Philadelphia. Thus the generating source of the Constitution lay in the rising volume of restraints upon commerce which the Confederation could not check. These were the proximate cause of our national existence down to today.
“So by a stroke as bold as it proved successful, they founded a nation, although they had set out only to find a way to reduce trade restrictions. So also they solved the particular problem causative of their historic action, by introducing the commerce clause in the new structure of power.
“. . . On this fact as much as any other we may safely say rests the vast economic development and present industrial power of the nation. To it may be credited largely the fact we are an independent and democratic country today.” W. Rutledge, A Declaration of Legal Faith 25-27 (1947).
*666Only by ignoring this chapter in our history could we invoke principles of federalism to defeat enforcement of the “Magna Carta of free enterprise” 39 enacted pursuant to Congress’ plenary power to regulate commerce among the States.
I respectfully dissent.

 Specific findings of likelihood of ultimate success on the merits, likelihood of irreparable harm, a balance of the equities in favor of respondent-movants, and of protection of the public interest by issuance of the injunction are recited and substantiated in the District Court opinion. 403 P. Supp. 527, 532-538 (1975). The Court of Appeals affirmed, specifically rejecting petitioner’s attack on the finding of a likelihood of ultimate success on the merits. 545 F. 2d 1050, 1058-1059 (CA7 1976).

 The late Richard W. McLaren served as Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice from 1969 until his appointment to the bench in 1972. In private practice he had acted as Chairman of the Antitrust Section of the American Bar Association.

 It is well settled, and the District Court so held, that when the precise conduct proscribed by the antitrust laws is sought to be furthered by litigation, the antitrust laws forbid a court from giving judgment if to do so “would be to make the courts a party to the carrying out of one of the very restraints forbidden by the Sherman Act.” Kelly v. Kosuga, 358 U. S. 516, 520. See 403 F. Supp., at 535, citing Continental Wall Paper Co. v. Louis Voight & Sons, 212 U. S. 227, 261. See Response of Carolina v. Leasco Response, Inc., 498 F. 2d 314, 317-320 (CA5 1974), cert. denied, 419 U. S. 1050; Milsen Co. v. Southland Corp., 454 F. 2d 363 (CA7 1971); Helfenbein v. International Industries, Inc., 438 F. 2d 1068, 1071 (CA8 1971); Farbenfabriken Bayer, A. G. v. Sterling Drug, Inc., 307 F. 2d 207 (CA3 1962); Tampa Electric Co. v. Nashville Coal Co., 276 F. 2d 766 (CA6 1960); United States v. Bayer Co., 135 F. Supp. 65 (SDNY 1955).

 “A cpurt of the United States may not grant an injunction to stay proceedings in a State court except as expressly authorized by Act of Congress, or where necessary in aid of its jurisdiction, or to protect or effectuate its judgments.” 28 U. S. C. § 2283.

 “The Sherman Act was designed to be a comprehensive charter of economic liberty aimed at preserving free and unfettered competition as the rule of trade.” Northern Pacific R. Co. v. United States, 356 U. S. 1, 4.
“The purpose of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act is to prevent undue restraints of interstate commerce, to maintain its appropriate freedom in the public interest, to afford protection from the subversive or coercive influences of monopolistic endeavor. As a charter of freedom, the Act has a generality and adaptability comparable to that found to be desirable in constitutional provisions. -It does not go into detailed definitions which might either work injury to legitimate enterprise or through particularization defeat its purposes by providing loopholes for escape. The restrictions the Act imposes are not mechanical or artificial. Its general phrases, interpreted to attain its fundamental objects, set up the essential standard of reasonableness. They call for vigilance in the detection and frustration of all efforts unduly to restrain the free course of interstate commerce.” Appalachian Coals, Inc. v. United States, 288 U. S. 344, 359-360.

 Act of Mar. 2, 1793, § 5, 1 Stat. 335: “[N]or shall a writ of injunction be granted to stay proceedings in any court of a state . . . .” For convenience, the plurality has referred to this clause as the “Anti-Injunction Act”; that, however, is not the proper name of the statute.

 In his first speech in support of his bill, Senator Sherman stated:
“The power of the State courts has been repeatedly exercised to set aside such combinations as I shall hereafter show, but these courts are limited in their jurisdiction to the State, and, in our complex system of government, are admitted to be unable to deal with the great evil that now threatens us.
“. . . The purpose of this bill is to enable the courts of the United States to apply the same remedies against combinations which injuriously affect the interests of the United States that have been applied in the several States to protect local interests.
“. . . The committee therefore deemed it proper by express legislation to confer on the circuit courts of the United States original jurisdiction of all suits of a civil nature at common law or in equity arising under this section, with authority to issue all remedial process or writs proper and necessary to enforce its provisions 21 Cong. Rec. 2456 (1890).
Later the same day he said:
“[Congress] may ‘regulate commerce;’ can it not protect commerce, nullify contracts that restrain commerce, turn it from its natural courses, increase the price of articles, and therefore diminish the amount of commerce?
“[The power of the ‘combinations’] for mischief will be greatly crippled by this bill. Their present plan of organization was adopted only to evade the jurisdiction of State courts.
“Suppose one of these combinations should unite all, or nearly all, the domestic producers of an article of prime necessity with a view to prevent competition and to keep the price up to the foreign cost and duty added, would not this be in restraint of trade and commerce and affect injuriously the operation of our revenue laws? Can Congress prescribe no remedy except to repeal its taxes? Surely it may authorize the executive authorities to appeal to the courts of the United States for such a remedy, as courts habitually apply in the States for the forfeiture of charters thus abused and the punishment of officers *649who practice such wrongs to the public. It may also give to our citizens the right to sue for such damages as they have suffered.” Id., at 2462. Senator Sherman, 3 days later, discussing the rise of the “combinations” during the preceding 20 years, stated:
“. . • The State courts have attempted to wrestle with this difficulty. I produced decisions of the supreme courts of several of the States.
“Take the State of New York, where the sugar trust was composed of seventeen corporations. What remedy had the people of New York in the suit that they had against that combination? None whatever, except as against one corporation out of the seventeen. No proceeding could be instituted in the State of New York by which all those corporations could be brought in one suit under the common jurisdiction of the United States. No remedy could be extended by the courts, although they were eager and earnest in search of a remedy.
“. . . When a man is injured by an unlawful combination why should he not have the power to sue in the courts of the United States? It would not answer to send him to a State court. It would not answer at all to send him to a court of limited jurisdiction. Then, besides, it is a court of the United States that alone has jurisdiction over all parts of the United States. The United States can send its writs into every part of a State and make parties in different States submit to its process. The States can not do that.” Id., at 2568-2569.
Similarly, in the House debate Congressman Culberson, floor sponsor of the bill, had this to say during his introductory remarks:
“If Congress will legislate within its sphere and to the limit to which it may go, and if the legislatures of the several States will do their duty and supplement that legislation, the trusts and combinations which are devouring the substance of the people of the country may be effectually suppressed. The States are powerless unless Congress will take charge of the trade between the States and make unlawful traffic that operates in restraint of trade and which promotes and encourages monopoly.” Id., at 4091.
See Letwin, Congress and the Sherman Antitrust Law: 1887-1890, 23 U. Chi. L. Rev. 221 (1956).

“[F]ounded upon broad conceptions of public policy, the prohibi*650tions of the statute were enacted to prevent not the mere injury to an individual which would arise from the doing of the prohibited acts, but the harm to the general public which would be occasioned by the evils which it was contemplated would be prevented, and hence not only the prohibitions of the statute but the remedies which it provided were co-extensive with such conceptions. . . . [T]he statute in express terms vested the Circuit Court [s] of the United States with 'jurisdiction to prevent and restrain violations of this act,’ and besides expressly conferred the amplest discretion in such courts to join such parties as might be deemed necessary and to exert such remedies as would fully accomplish the purposes intended.” Wilder Mfg. Co. v. Corn Products Co., 236 U. S. 165, 174.
See Northern Securities Co. v. United States, 193 U. S. 197, 343-347, 349-350 (opinion of Harlan, J.).

 Section 4 of the Sherman Act authorized equitable relief in actions brought by-United States Attorneys; §7 authorized any person injured in his business or property by reason of a violation of the antitrust laws to recover treble damages. 26 Stat. 209-210. In both sections, as is true of § 16 of the Clayton Act, the scope of the court’s jurisdiction is limited only by the need to establish a violation of the Act.

 Although the kind of relief which is appropriate in private litigation may sometimes be different from that which the Government may obtain, cf. United States v. Borden Co., 347 U. S. 514, 518-520, there is no difference in the scope of the jurisdictional grant to the federal court in the two kinds of cases:
“[T]he purpose of giving private parties treble-damage and injunctive remedies was not merely to provide private relief, but was to serve as well the high purpose of enforcing the antitrust laws. E. g., United States v. Borden Co., 347 U. S. 514, 518 (1954). Section 16 should be construed and applied with this purpose in mind .... Its availability should be ‘conditioned by the necessities of the public interest which Congress has sought to protect.’ [Hecht Co. v. Bowles, 321 U. S. 321, 330,]” Zenith Corp. v. Hazeltine, 395 U. S. 100, 130-131.

 Section 16 provides:
“[A]ny person . . . shall be entitled to sue for and have injunctive relief, in any court of the United States having jurisdiction over the parties, against threatened loss or damage by a violation of the antitrust laws . . . when and under the same conditions and principles as injunctive relief against threatened conduct that will cause loss or damage is granted by courts of equity, under the rules governing such proceedings . . . 38 Stat. 737, 15 U. S. C. § 26.
The legislative history of § 16 is thin. In addition to the nearly identical House and Senate Reports, ante, at 634 n. 5, the following comments 'from the House debate provide some idea of the congressional intent. Congressman McGillicuddy, a member of the Commerce Committee, described the perceived need:
“Under the present law any person injured in his business or property by acts in violation of the Sherman antitrust law may recover his damage. . . . There is no provision under the present law, however, to prevent threatened loss or damage even though it be irreparable. The practical effect of this is that a man would have to sit by and see his business ruined before he could take advantage of his remedy. In what condition is such a man to take up a long and costly lawsuit to defend his rights?
“The proposed bill solves this problem for the person, firm, or corporation threatened with loss or damage to property by providing injunctive relief against the threatened act that will cause such loss or damage. Under this most excellent provision a man does not have to wait until he is ruined in his business before he has his remedy.” 51 Cong. Rec. 9261 (1914).
During consideration of the Conference Report Congressman Floyd described the scope of the § 16 remedy:
“[S]o that if a man is injured by a discriminatory contract, by a tying contract, by the unlawful acquisition of stock of competing corporations, or by reason of someone acting unlawfully as a director in two banks or other corporations, he can go into any court and enjoin or restrain the party from committing such unlawful acts.” Id,., at 16319.

"[T]he generic designation of the first and second sections of the [Sherman Act], when taken together, embraced every conceivable act which could possibly come within the spirit or purpose of the prohibitions of the law, without regard to the garb in which such acts were clothed. That is to say, it was held [in Standard Oil Co. v. United States, 221 U. S. 1,] that in view of the general language of the statute and the public policy which it manifested, there was no possibility of frustrating that policy by resorting to any disguise or subterfuge of form, since resort to reason rendered it impossible to escape by any indirection the prohibitions of the statute.” United States v. American Tobacco Co., 221 U. S. 106, 181.

 Walker Process Equipment, Inc. v. Food Machinery & Chemical Corp., 382 U. S. 172.

 MacGregor v. Westinghouse Co., 329 U. S. 402.

 Pratt v. Paris Gas Light & Coke Co., 168 U. S. 255, 260.

 Otter Tail Power Co. v. United States, 410 U. S. 366; 417 U. S. 901 (summary affirmance after remand); California Motor Transport Co. v. Trucking Unlimited, 404 U. S. 508.

 Timken Co. v. United States, 341 U. S. 593; Farbenfabriken Bayer, A. G. v. Sterling Drug, Inc., 307 F. 2d 207 (CA3 1962); Gray Line, Inc. v. Gray Line Sightseeing Cos., 246 F. Supp. 495 (ND Cal. 1965).

 International Salt Co. v. United States, 332 U. S. 392; United *653Shoe Machinery Corp. v. United States, 258 U. S. 451; Phillips v. Crown Central Petroleum Corp., 376 F. Supp. 1250 (Md. 1973).

 Janel Sales Corp. v. Lanvin Parfums, Inc., 396 F. 2d 398 (CA2 1968), cert. denied, 393 U. S. 938; Katz Drug Co. v. W. A. Sheaffer Pen Co., 6 F. Supp. 212 (WD Mo. 1933).

 In litigation between a franchisee and a franchisor the former may challenge the validity of various contract provisions under federal law, while the latter may rely heavily on state contract law as a basis for controlling the franchisee’s conduct. State proceedings to obtain possession of disputed premises or equipment are powerful weapons in such litigation, even when the federal court has the power to maintain the status quo. See Chmieleski v. City Products Corp., 71 F. R. D. 118, 141-142, 158 (WD Mo. 1976).

 The potential consequences of the plurality’s view may perhaps best be illustrated by reference to a common-law decision that could not possibly survive scrutiny under the Sherman Act. In Nordenfelt v. Maxim Nordenfelt Guns & Ammunition Co., [1894] A. C. 535, the House of Lords held that a 25-year, worldwide covenant not to compete in the arms business was an enforceable bargain. One of the parties to such a contract was therefore entitled to enjoin a breach of the agreement by another party. If such common-law relief should be granted by a state court in a comparable situation, and if the plurality’s interpretation of the statute were accepted, a federal court would be powerless to interfere with state proceedings to enforce such a judgment.

 The text of the statute is quoted in n. 4, supra.

 Rather surprisingly the plurality seems to regard Clothing Workers v. Richman Bros. Co., 348 U. S. 511, as supporting its position. That case involved a construction of the portion of the Taft-Hartley Act that conferred jurisdiction on the National Labor Relations Board to obtain in-junctive relief in certain situations. The Court rejected the argument that the statute implicitly authorized similar relief for private parties:
"Congress explicitly gave such jurisdiction to the district courts only on behalf of the Board on a petition by it or ‘the officer or regional attorney to whom the matter may be referred.’ § 10 (j), (1), 61 Stat. 149, 29 U. S. C. § 160 (j), (1). To hold that the Taft-Hartley Act also authorizes a private litigant to secure interim relief would be to ignore the closely circumscribed jurisdiction given to the District Court and to generalize where Congress has chosen to specify. To find exclusive authority for relief vested in the Board and not in private parties accords with other aspects of the Act.” Id., at 517.
Since the statute did not expressly authorize the requested relief, it was obviously not within the “expressly authorized” exception to § 2283. The fact that the Court simply read the relevant statutes literally in that case supports my view that we should use the same approach here.
In Atlantic Coast Line R. Co. v. Locomotive Engineers, 398 U. S. 281, on which the plurality also relies, the union did not even argue that injunctive relief was expressly authorized by federal statute. It unsuccessfully contended "that the federal injunction was proper either ‘to protect *655or effectuate’ the District Court’s denial of an injunction in 1967, or as ‘necessary in aid of’ the District Court’s jurisdiction.” Id,., at 284. That case is wholly inapposite to the issue presented today.
The fact that these two cases provide the plurality with its strongest support emphasizes the dramatic character of its refusal to accept the plain meaning of the words Congress has written.

 “But the power of the District Courts to issue an injunction to stay proceedings in a State court is questioned, since, by the Judiciary Act of 1793, 1 Stat. 335, it was declared that no writ of injunction shall be granted [by the United States courts] ‘to stay proceedings in any court of a State.’ But the act of 1851 was a subsequent statute, and by the 4th section of this act — after providing for proceedings to be had under it for the benefit of ship owners, and after declaring that it shall be deemed a sufficient compliance with its -requirements on their part if they shall transfer their interest in ship and freight for the benefit of the claimants to a trustee to be appointed by the court — it is expressly declared, that ‘from and after [such] transfer all claims and proceedings against the owners shall cease.’ Surely this injunction applies as well to ‘claims and proceedings’ in State courts as to those in the federal courts . . . .” 109 U. S., at 599-600.

 The relevant portions of §§ 205 (a) and (c) of the Emergency Price Control Act of 1942, 56 Stat. 33, simply provided:
“Sec. 205. (a) Whenever in the judgment of the Administrator any person has engaged or is about to engage in any acts or practices which constitute or will constitute a violation of any provision of section 4 of this Act, he may make application to the appropriate court for an order enjoining such acts or practices, or for an order enforcing compliance with such provision, and upon a showing by the Administrator that such person has engaged or is about to engage in any such acts or practices a permanent or temporary injunction, restraining order, or other order shall be granted without bond.
“(c) The district courts shall have jurisdiction of criminal proceedings *656for violations of section 4 of this Act, and, concurrently with State and Territorial courts, of all other proceedings under section 205 of this Act.”

 “In the first place, it is evident that, in order to qualify under the 'expressly authorized’ exception of the anti-injunction statute, a federal law need not contain an express reference to that statute. As the Court has said, 'no prescribed formula is required; an authorization need not expressly refer to §2283.’ Amalgamated Clothing Workers v. Richman Bros. Co., 348 U. S. 511, 516. Indeed, none of the previously recognized statutory exceptions contains any such reference. Secondly, a federal law need not expressly authorize an injunction of a state court proceeding in order to qualify as an exception. Three of the six previously recognized statutory exceptions contain no such authorization. Thirdly, it is clear that, in order to qualify as an ‘expressly authorized’ exception to the anti-injunction statute, an Act of Congress must have created a specific and uniquely federal right or remedy, enforceable in a federal court of equity, that could be frustrated if the federal court were not empowered to enjoin a state court proceeding. This is not to say that in order to come within the exception an Act of Congress must, on its face and in every one of its provisions, be totally incompatible with the prohibition of the anti-injunction statute. The test, rather, is whether an Act of Congress, clearly creating a federal right or remedy enforceable in a federal court of equity, could be given its intended scope only by the stay of a state court proceeding.” 407 U. S., at 237-238 (footnotes omitted).

 See n. 11, supra.

 Thus,, the 1851 Act to limit the liability of shipowners, 9 Stat. 635, applied equally to “preventing or arresting the prosecution of separate suits,” see Providence & N. Y. S. S. Co. v. Hill Mfg. Co., 109 U. S. 578, 596. The Interpleader Act, 28 U. S. C. § 2361, in terms, applies equally to the “instituting or prosecuting” of other litigation. In terms of the! interest in federalism, since the injunction against litigation typically runs against the parties rather than the court, there is little difference between denying a citizen access to the state forum and denying him the right to prosecute an existing case to its conclusion. In either situation, a federal injunction must rest on a determination that an important federal policy . outweighs the interest in allowing a state court to resolve a particular controversy. But when the federal policy does justify that conclusion, the timing of the state-court action should rarely be controlling.

 See n. 7, supra.

 It is true that when the Sherman Act was passed, Congress did not expressly address “the possibility that state-court proceedings would be used to violate the Sherman or Clayton Acts.” Ante, at 634. As the statute has been construed, however, it is now well settled that state courts can be used as the very instruments by which litigants, and the public, may be deprived of rights protected by the antitrust laws. When the state courts are so used and the antitrust laws thereby violated, the state litigation is as plainly a matter of federal legislative concern as if it had been expressly identified in the debates preceding the enactment of the 1890 statute.

 As already noted, supra, at 654r-655, n. 23, there was no such express grant of jurisdiction to private litigants in either Clothing Workers v. Richman Bros. Co., 348 U. S. 511, or Atlantic Coast Line R. Co. v. Locomotive Engineers, 398 U. S. 281.

 Indeed, Mr. Justice Black’s opinion for the Court in Porter v. Dichen, 328 U. S. 252, seems to proceed on the assumption that the anti-injunction statute is inapplicable when the federal statute may be enforced in either a state or a federal court.

 Cases in which § 2283 has been held to bar injunctive relief against state proceedings have seldom involved attempts to enforce federal statutes. Indeed, some courts have held that any federal statute expressly authorizing equitable relief is within the exception from § 2283.

 It is worthy of note that only 5 of the cited statutes predate the addition of the words “except as expressly authorized by Act of Congress” to the anti-injunction statute in 1948 (fully 16 were enacted in the last 10 years).

 The Reviser’s Note to § 2283, which is taken from the House Report, H. R. Rep. No. 308, 80th Cong., 1st Sess., A181-A182 (1947), states that, with the exception of the addition of the words “to protect or effectuate its judgments,” which were intended to overrule Toucey v. New York Life Ins. Co., 314 U. S. 118, “the revised section restores the basic law as generally understood and interpreted prior to the Toucey decision.”

 “In some situations there could be, of course, a violation of a covenant not to compete without the breach of a fiduciary duty, as would be the case if Stoner had not been an officer and director of plaintiff. In the present case, however, the acts of defendants in misappropriating the Lektro-Vend [machine] and their use of it to compete against plaintiff are intertwined, the latter being, so to speak, the means by which the former was brought to bear against plaintiff.” Vendo Co. v. Stoner, 58 Ill. 2d 289, 306-307, 321 N. E. 2d 1, 11 (1974).

 Indeed, a state court’s conclusion that the breach of a covenant not to compete constitutes the violation of a fiduciary obligation as a matter of state law is not inconsistent with a federal-court determination that the litigation enforcing that covenant was “conducted in bad faith” as that *664concept is used in cases like Huffman v. Pursue, Ltd., 420 U. S. 592, 611. While the District Court did not specifically address the question involved in Huffman and Younger v. Harris, 401 U. S. 37, it had the following to say in addressing the extent of the Sherman Act violation:
“There is persuasive evidence that Vendo’s activities in its litigation against the Stoner interests in Illinois state court were not a genuine attempt to use the adjudicative process legitimately. Its theft of trade secret claim was clearly non-meritorious, and litigation of this claim might well be interpreted — considering the record as a whole — as an attempt to further harass the Stoner interests and limit the amount of aid Stoner could lend Lektro-Vend. The attempt to enforce the covenants not to compete . . . appears to have been to lengthen the period for which the noncompetition covenants would run. The purpose of this portion of the state litigation seems purely anticompetitive.” 403 F. Supp., at 534-535. The Court of Appeals implicitly affirmed, supra, at 646. Thus while every state proceeding whicfy clashes with the antitrust laws would not necessarily be motivated by a desire to harass or be conducted in bad faith, the findings indicate that such was the case here.

 See Freeman v. Bee Machine Co., 319 U. S. 448; General Investment Co. v. Lake Shore & Mich. So. R. Co., 260 U. S. 261.

 “Antitrust laws in general, and the Sherman Act in particular, are the Magna Carta of free enterprise. They are as important to the preservation of economic freedom and our free-enterprise system as the Bill of Rights is to the protection of our fundamental personal freedoms. And the freedom guaranteed each and every business, no matter how small, is the freedom to compete — to assert with vigor, imagination, devotion, and ingenuity whatever economic muscle it can muster.” United States v. Topco Associates, 405 U. S. 596, 610. See also Mandeville Island Farms v. American Crystal Sugar Co., 334 U. S. 219, 235-236.