Court Opinion

ID: 9460963
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:03:24.186298+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:50.553411
License: Public Domain

LEVIN H. CAMPBELL,
Circuit Judge (dissenting).
I reluctantly dissent because I am unable to accept the broad interpretation placed upon 18 U.S.C. § 3692. In the absence of contemporaneous legislative history, it seems strained to impute to legislators working on a recodification of the criminal law an intention to broaden in such a significant way the reach of section 11 of the Norris-La-Guardia Act. The recodification occurred one year after the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act in a setting foreign to substantive revision of the labor law. While the language of the recodification is somewhat more broad than formerly, most of the earlier language was tracked, and it seems most likely to me that a draftsman, perhaps unsophisticated in labor law, was merely trying to carry forward the old statute in a new setting.
In any event, for more than twenty years, the NLRB has construed the statute not to require jury trials. The Supreme Court has stated that “[w]hen faced with a problem of statutory construction, this Court shows great deference to the interpretation given the statute by the officers or agency charged with its administration.” Udall v. Tallman, 380 U.S. 1, 16, 85 S.Ct. 792, 801, 13 L.Ed.2d 616 (1965). Ten years ago a federal circuit court supported the agency’s position. Madden v. Grain Elevator, Flour and Feed Mill Workers, ILA, Local 418, 334 F.2d 1014 (7th Cir. 1964), cert. denied, 379 U.S. 967, 85 S. Ct. 661, 13 L.Ed.2d 560 (1965). If the statute had been passed recently, I might have found it easier to join the court’s position. But it is not a new section, and the agency is not advancing a novel or unreasonable construction. Any change in the interpretation of the law should, in my judgment, come only from Congress.
*122The fact that in 29 U.S.C. § 160(h) Congress specifically exempted the jurisdiction of courts “sitting in equity” from the limitations of the Norris-LaGuardia Act does not necessarily mean that it must have intended the NorrisLaGuardia Act to apply in some cases. Its language does not become mere surplusage unless it intended to connect the two acts in some instances; rather Congress may have been stressing their differences. Cf. United States v. Giordano, 416 U.S. 505, 94 S.Ct. 1820, 1832, 40 L.Ed.2d 341 (1974).
If a literal reading of section 3692 is adopted to justify extending coverage to the Taft-Hartley Act, further problems arise. When the plain meaning of the words are analyzed, it is logically difficult to interpret “all cases of contempt” as limited to all cases of criminal contempt. The majority reasons that when courts enforce injunctive orders by civil contempt, they are “acting in equity” and, thus, 29 U.S.C. § 160(h) precludes the application of the Norris-LaGuardia provisions. However, if section 3692 is interpreted not as a rewriting of section 11 of the Norris-LaGuardia Act but as a new expression of congressional attitude toward labor contempt proceedings, it would have to be independent of the Norris-LaGuardia Act. If it is so independent, then it is not an application of the Norris-LaGuardia Act and arguably not precluded by section 160 (h). I agree, however, with the majority that such a radical revision was certainly not intended.
To the extent that the opinion distinguishes between civil and criminal contempt on the basis of policy considerations underlying jury trials in criminal contempt proceedings, I would prefer to rest solely on the lines of distinction drawn by the Constitution. The Supreme Court’s sensitivity to the rights of alleged contemnors, cf. Codispoti v. Pennsylvania, 418 U.S. 506, 94 S.Ct. 2687, 41 L.Ed.2d 912 (1974), is sufficient protection against the agency’s undercutting fundamental policy considerations. Jury trials take more time and cost more money, and they are not ideally geared to this sort of procedure. I see no reason to add one more burden to an already overburdened system when, so far as appears, there is no need to do so.