Court Opinion

ID: 9421800
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:59:56.366826+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:32.505305
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Frankfurter,
dissenting.
The problem represented by this ease is. as old as the Union and will persist as long as our society remains a constitutional federalism. It concerns the relation of the United States and the courts of the United States* to the States and the courts of the States. The federal judiciary has no power to sit in judgment upon a determination of a state court unless it is found that it must rest on disposition of a claim under federal law.* This is so whether a state adjudication comes directly under
*408review in this Court or reaches us by way of the limited scope of habeas corpus jurisdiction originating in a District Court. (Judicial power is not so restrictively distributed in other federalisms comparable to • ours. Neither the Canadian Supreme Court nor the Australian High Court is restricted to reviewing Dominion and Commonwealth issues respectively. The former reviews decisions of provincial courts turning exclusively on provincial law and the latter may review state decisions resting exclusively on state law.) To such an extent is it beyond our power to review state adjudications turning on state law that even in the high tide of nationalism following the Civil War, this Court felt compelled to restrict itself -to review of federal questions, in cases coming from state courts, by limiting broadly phrased legislation that seemingly gave this Court power to review'all questions, state and federal, in cases jurisdic-tionally before it. It refused to impute to Congress such a “radical and hazardous change of a policy vital in its essential nature to the independence of the State courts . . . .” Murdock v. Memphis, 20 Wall. 590, 630. This decision has not unjustifiably been called one of “the twin pillars” (the other is Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee, 1 Wheat. 304) on which have been built “the main lines of demarcation between the authority of the state legal systems and that of the federal system.” Hart, The Relations Between State and Federal Law, 54 Col. L. Rev. 489, 503-504.
Something that thus goes to the very structure of our federal system in its distribution of power between the United States and the States is not a mere bit of red tape to be cut, on the assumption that this Court has general discretion to see justice done. Nor is it one of those “technical” fnatters that laymen, with more confidence than understanding of our constitutional system, so often disdain..
*409In view of so vital a limitation on our jurisdiction, this Court has, until relatively recently, been very strict on insisting on an affirmative showing on the record, when review is here sought, that it clearly appear that the judgment complained of rested on the construction of federal law and was not supportable on a rule of local law beyond our power to question. Particularly in cases where life or liberty is at stake, the Court has relaxed this insistence to the extent of giving state courts an opportunity to clarify a decision that could fairly be said to be obscure or ambiguous in establishing that it rested or could rest on an interpretation of state law. No doubt this procedure makes for delay in ultimate decision. But it ensures that there is no denial of the right to resort to this Court for the vindication of a federal right when a state court’s adjudication leaves fair ground for doubt whether a federal right controlled the issue. Experience shows that this procedure for clarification at times establishes that it was, in fact, federal law on which the state decision rested, while in other instances the state court removed.all doubt that state law supported its decision, and there was an end of the matter. Compare Whitney v. California, 274 U. S. 357, and Herb v. Pitcairn, 324 U. S. 117, 325 U. S. 77, with State Tax Comm’n v. Van Cott, 306 U. S. 511, and Van Cott v. State Tax Comm’n, 98 Utah 264, 96 P. 2d 740; Minnesota v. National Tea Co., 309 U. S. 551, and National Tea Co. v. State, 208 Minn. 607, 294 N. W. 230; Williams v. Georgia, 349 U. S. 375, and Williams v. State, 211 Ga. 763, 88 S. E. 2d 376.
Even the most benign or latitudinarian attitude in reading state court opinions precludes today’s decision. It is not questioned that the Indiana Supreme Court discussed two issues, one indisputably a rule of local law and the other a claim under the Fourteenth Amendment. That court discussed the claim under the Fourteenth Amendment rather summarily, after it had dealt *410extensively with the problem of local law. If the Indiana court’s opinion had stopped with its lengthy discussion of the local law and had not gone on to consider the federal issue, prefacing its consideration with the introductory sentence that “[o]ur decision on the point under examination makes it unnecessary for us to consider the other contentions of the appellant; however, because of the finality of the sentence in the case we have reviewed the evidence to satisfy ourselves that there is no miscarriage of justice in this case . . .” (Irvin v. State, 236 Ind. 384, 392-393, 139 N. E. 2d 898, 902), it is inconceivable that, on the proceeding before us, we would entertain jurisdiction. What this Court is therefore saying, in effect, is that it interprets the discussion of the Fourteenth Amendment problem which follows the elaborate and potentially conclusive discussion of the state issue not as resting the case on two grounds, state and federal, but as a total abandonment of the state ground, a legal erasing of the seven-page discussion of state law. Concededly, if a state court rests a decision on both an adequate state ground and a federal ground, this Court is without jurisdiction to review the superfluous federal ground. For while state courts are subject to the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution (Art. VI, § 2), they are so subject only if that Clause becomes operative, and they need not pass on a federal issue if a relevant rule of state law can dispose of the litigation.
It may be that it is the unwritten practice of the Indiana Supreme Court to have an “unnecessary” consideration of a federal issue wipe out or displace a prior full discussion of. a, controlling state ground. Maybe so. But it is surely not a self-evident proposition that discussion of a federal claim constitutes abandonment of a prior disposition óf a case on a relevant and conclusive state ground. The frequency with which state court opinions indulge in the superfluity of dealing with a federal issue, *411after resting a case on a state ground, affords abundant-proof that we cannot take judicial notice of an inference that a federal question discussion following a state-ground disposition spells abandonment of the latter. Perhaps if counsel had documented such an Indiana practice, had supplied us with a basis for drawing that conclusion regarding the appropriate way of reading Indiana opinions, this Court itself would be entitled to find that such is the way in which Indiana decisions must be read. But we cannot extemporize the existence of such an Indiana practice as a basis for our jurisdiction. Restricted', as we are restricted, to - the text of what the Supreme-Court of Indiana wrote in 236 Ind. 384,139 N. E. 2d 898, in ascertaining what it is that the Indiana Supreme Court meant to do when it first enlarged upon a controlling state ground and then,' ex gratia, dealt with an “unnecessary” federal ground, we, are no't free to pluck from "the air an undocumented state practice on the strength of which we are to ignore the bulk of the state court’s opinion and treat it as though it had not been written of its significance had been discredited by the Indiana Supreme Court.
In the most compassionate mood, all' we aré entitled to do in a case like this, where life is at stake, is to afford an opportunity for the Indiana Supreme Court to tell us whether, in fact, it abandoned its state ground and rested* its decision solely on' the “unnecessary” federal ground. Thus only could this Court acquire jurisdiction over the federal question. Such a remission to the Indiana Supreme Court, by an appropriate procedure, for a clarification of its intention in writing this double-barreled opinion would be in full accord with the series of cases in which the state court was given opportunity to clarify its purpose. To assume, as the Court does, that the Indiana Supreme Court threw into the discard an elaborately considered local law rule is, I most respectfully submit, to assuipe a jurisdiction that we do not have. This assumptiofi of *412jurisdiction cannot help but call to mind the admonition of Benjamin R. Curtis, one of the notable members in the Court’s history, that “questions of jurisdiction were questions of power as between the United States and the several States.” 2 Cliff. 614 (1st Cir.).
With due regard to the limits of our jurisdiction there is only one other mode of reading the opinion of the Indiana Supreme Court, one other mode, that is, by which the meaning of its opinion is to be decided by that court and not this. That is the mode which my brother Harlan has explicated, and it is entirely consistent with the governing considerations which I have tried to set forth, for me also to join, as I do join, his dissenting opinion..

 The formulation by Mr. Chief Justice Fuller, for the Court, of this .jurisdictional sine qua non in California Powder Works v. Davis, 151 U. S. 389, 393, represents, the 'undeviating practice of the Court until today:"
“It is axiomatic that, in order to give this court jurisdiction on writ of error to the highest court of a State in which a decision in the suit could be had, it must appear affirmatively not only that a Federal question was presented for decision by the highest court of the State having jurisdiction, but that its decision was necessary to the determination of the cause, and' that it was actually decided or that the judgment as rendered could not have been given without deciding it. And where the decision complained of rests on an independent ground, not involving a Federal question and broad enough to maintain the judgment, the writ of error will be dismissed by this court without considering any Federal question that may also have been presented.”