Court Opinion

ID: 9418549
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:31:33.929004+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:05.738716
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice McReynolds and Mr. Justice Sutherland,
dissenting.
We cannot think Congress intended that the Act of March 4, 1917, without more should deprive the States of power to protect themselves against threatened disaster like the one disclosed by this record.
If the Secretary of Agriculture had taken some affirmative action the problem would be a very different one. Congress could have exerted all the power which -this statute delegated to him by positive and direct enactment. If it had said nothing whatever, certainly the State could have resorted to the quarantine; and this same right, we think, should be recognized when its .agent has done nothing.
It is a serious thing to paralyze the efforts of a State to protect her people, against impending calamity and leave them to the slow charity of a far-off and perhaps supine federal bureau.' No such purpose should be attributed to Congress unless indicated beyond reasonable doubt.