Court Opinion

ID: 9643021
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 18:15:36.773106+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:56.028657
License: Public Domain

ALLEN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I cannot agree that the condemnation prayed for is unauthorized under the United States Constitution. The case in my judgment does not fall within the doctrine of Panama Refining Co. v. Ryan, 293 U. S. 388, 55 S. Ct. 241, 79 L. Ed. 446, and A. L. A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 55. S. Ct. 837, 79 L. Ed. -, decided May 27,1935. In those decisions the delegation held invalid was a delegation of legislative power. The sections of the Act here involved provide for no code nor penalty, but relate to a purely executive function, namely, the preparation and carrying out of a comprehensive program of public works, including low-cost housing and slum-clearance projects.
If Panama Refining Co. v. Ryan, supra, and Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, supra, are controlling, the standards therein held to be necessary exist in these sections of the statute. The terms used are defined in the dictionary, and are understood in common speech. Slum clearance involves the wrecking of houses in a slum and the clearing of slum lands for new and sanitary dwellings. “Low-cost housing” is not ambiguous. Such projects have been carried on in civilized countries, including the United States, for many years. The self-liquidating feature of the project arising from the authority to lease and sell the properties is incidental to the main questions. We are not confronted with an arbitrary misuse of power, for the case is presented on demurrer, and the acts held by the trial court to be unauthorized come squarely within the purview of the statute.
The questions are whether under the Constitution (1) the Congress is authorized to levy a tax and make appropriations for a comprehensive program of low-cost housing and slum clearance, and (2) whether the United States Government can exercise the right of eminent domain in order to carry out such program.
The power of taxation to provide for the general welfare specifically granted to the Congress in article 1, § 8, cl. 1, authorizes the carrying on of low-cost housing and slum-clearance projects, national in scope. This project is comprehensive and national in scope.1 Funds raised by taxation were actually appropriated for this particular purpose.
At the time the Constitution was adopted this general welfare clause was understood to confer upon the Congress an independent and substantive power, ceded to it by the states, totally distinct from those conferred in the succeeding clauses of Article 1, § 8. 4 Jefferson’s Correspondence, 524; 4 Hamilton’s Works (Lodge Ed.), 151; Monroe, Views of the Presidents of the United States on the Subject of Internal Improvements, 2 American State Papers, Misc., 443, 446. See, also, Story on the Constitution (5th Ed.), § 913; Burdick on the Constitution, § 77, and Willoughby, United States Constitution,. § 269.
It is only to the authority granted by this clause that much of the constructive legislation enacted by the Congress during the past one hundred years is referable. The Constitution made no provision for the *689Bureau of Education, the Department of Labor, the Department of Commerce, the Public Health Service, the Geological Survey, the Bureau of Mines, the Department of Agriculture, the Bureau of Fisheries, the Children’s Bureau, the Smithsonian Institution, the Bureau of Standards. While certain of the activities of these departments or bureaus are authorized by the Constitution, as, for instance, the testing of weights and measures by the Bureau of Standards, there are many which relate to no other function specifically confided to the National Government by the Constitution, except that of providing for the general welfare through taxation. The Congress has continuously construed this clause as meaning that its power to tax and to make appropriations is not limited to the purposes set forth in the subsequent clauses of article 1, § 8, but includes the power to raise and appropriate money not “ad libitum” as pointed out by Jefferson (op. cit., supra) but to provide for the general welfare. This construction has prevailed too long and has been too uniform to be disregarded. McPherson v. Blacker, 146 U. S. 1, 36, 13 S. Ct. 3, 36 L. Ed. 869.
The individual states have power to enter into low-cost housing and slum-clearance projects within their borders. Green v. Frazier, Governor, 253 U. S. 233, 40 S. Ct. 499, 64 L. Ed. 878. However, the police power is reserved to the states under the Tenth Amendment. “But it is none the less true that when the United States exerts any of the powers conferred upon it by the Constitution, no valid objection can be based upon the fact that such exercise may be attended by the same incidents which attend the exercise by a State of its police power, or that it may tend to accomplish a similar purpose.” Hamilton, Collector, v. Kentucky Distilleries & Warehouse Co., 251 U. S. 146, 156, 40 S. Ct. 106, 108, 64 L. Ed. 194. Cf. Lottery Case, 188 U. S. 321, 357, 23 S. Ct. 321, 47 L. Ed. 492.
In Hoke v. United States, 227 U. S. 308, 33 S. Ct. 281, 57 L. Ed. 523, 43 L. R. A. (N. S.) 906, Ann. Cas. 1913E, 905, it was urged that the Act under review was an attempt to interfere with the police power of the states to regulate the morals of their citizens. The court, in 227 U. S. 308, at page 322, 33 S. Ct. 281, 284, says: “Our dual form of government has its perplexities, State and Nation having different spheres of jurisdiction, as we have said, but it must be kept in mind that we are one people; and the powers reserved to the States and those conferred on the Nation are adapted to be exercised, whether independently or concurrently, to promote the general welfare, material and moral.”
Also the court said “but there is a domain which the States cannot reach and over which Congress alone has power; and if such power be exerted to control what the states cannot, it is an argument for— not against — its legality.”
The problem of slum elimination throughout the nation lies within a domain which the individual states cannot reach and over which the Congress alone has power. This is an argument for — not against — the legality of this enactment so far as it constitutes an exercise of the taxing power to provide for the general welfare. Here the Congress, in my judgment, is exercising a power expressly conferred and ceded to it by the states in taxing and making appropriations for these purposes.
But the further question arises whether the power of eminent domain can be exercised in order to carry out these projects. The National Government possesses the power of eminent domain within the field prescribed for it by the Constitution. Article 1, § 8, cl. 1, gives the taxing power and the power of appropriation to the Congress. The power of eminent domain may be exercised wherever necessary and proper for carrying into execution the power of taxation and appropriation for the general welfare. The Fifth Amendment, however, prohibits the taking of private property for public use without just compensation, and therefore by implication requires that the power of eminent domain be exercised only in the taking of private property “for public use.” The specific question is narrow in scope. It does not involve nor hint at the condemnation of farm land nor the operation of factories by the government. The question is whether a national low-cost housing and slum-clearance project involves a public use. In my opinion taxation and appropriation by the Congress are authorized itnder article 1, § 8, cl. 1, for low-cost housing projects to relieve unemployment so widespread as that which existed when this Act was passed, and this constitutes a public use. However, apart from the purpose declared in the statute, of creating nation-wide employment, this property is sought to be taken for a public use. Low-cost housing *690and slum-clearance subserve a public purpose, and when national in scope, they fall within the constitutional powers of the National Government.
The slum is the breeding place of disease and crime.2 Also slum clearance cannot be completely effected without low-cost housing. If disease and crime are to be rooted out of slum neighborhoods, the residents must be placed in homes which they can rent or buy. The wrecking of the rookeries must be followed by new and inexpensive housing.
The Congress has declared that this is a public use. A declaration so made will be respected by the courts unless the use be palpably without reasonable foundation. United States v. Gettysburg Electric Ry. Co., 160 U. S. 668, 680, 16 S. Ct. 427, 40 L. Ed. 576. That was a case involving not a declaration by a state legislature, but by the Congress, as in this case. The peculiar opportunity possessed by state legislatures for determining what is a public use within the state resides in the Congress with respect to determining what is a national public use when it acts, as here, within its constitutional powers.
The problem of housing is directly connected with the public morals. Its significance as bearing upon home environment is recognized by the United States Supreme Court in Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co., 272 U. S. 365, 47 S. Ct. 114, 71 L. Ed. 303, 54 A. L. R. 1016. Since taxing to provide for the general welfare is one of the substantive powers of the Congress, 1¡he fact that national plans for low-cost housing may duplicate similar plans existing in the state does not affect the power. Hoke v. United States, supra.
No case precisely similar has been decided by the United States Supreme Court, which has wisely declined to lay down a rigid definition of public use. However, attention has repeatedly been called to the inadequacy of use by the general public as a universal test, and condemnation of private property, far less directly connected with the public good than these projects, has been held to involve a public use. In Clark v. Nash, 198 U. S. 361, 25 S. Ct. 676, 49 L. Ed. 1085, 4 Ann. Cas. 1171, condemnation of certain land was allowed for the irrigation of other land, belonging to one private individual. In Strickley v. Highland Boy Gold Mining Co., 200 U. S. 527, 26 S. Ct. 301, 50 L. Ed. 581, 4 Ann. Cas. 1174, condemnation of private land was allowed for the erection of an aerial tramway for one private corporation. Rindge Co. v. County of Los Angeles, 262 U. S. 700, 707, 43 S. Ct. 689, 693, 67 L. Ed. 1186, held that it is not essential that the entire community, nor even any considerable portion, should directly enjoy or participate in any improvement in order to constitute a public use, citing Fallbrook Irrigation District v. Bradley, 164 U. S. 112, 17 S. Ct. 56, 41 L. Ed. 369, which decided that a public use existed in the irrigation of arid land privately owned.
The uses declared to be public include purposes much wider than the mere erection of public buildings or the physical enjoyment of property owned by the United States Government. In Mount Vernon-Woodberry Cotton Duck Co. v. Alabama Interstate Power Co., 240 U. S. 30, 32, 36 S. Ct. 234, 236, 60 L. Ed. 507, which involved the condemnation of land under statutes authorizing the manufacture and sale of electric power, the court states that *691to draw energy from streams “and so to save mankind from toil that it can be spared, is to supply what, next to intellect, is the very foundation of all our achievements and all our welfare. If that purpose is not public, we should be at a loss to say what is.” In Rindge Co. v. County of Los Angeles, supra, the court said: “Public uses are not limited, in the modern view, to matters of mere business necessity and ordinary convenience, but may extend to matters of public health, recreation and enjoyment.”
It is true that these cases, with the exception of United States v. Gettysburg Electric Ry. Co., supra, involved state statutes; but in every case the question was squarely raised that the use involved in the condemnation was private; and every case held that a public use existed.
The power of condemnation by the state is to be considered in the light of the police power. The power of condemnation by the National Government is to be considered in the light of the express and independent power of the Congress to levy and collect taxes and make appropriations to provide for the general welfare. In the exercise of this specific power, the National Government may undertake those projects which benefit the health, the morals, and the general welfare of the people. One such project is the elimination on a comprehensive scale of the slum.
The judgment should be reversed.

 Work on slum-clearance projects has been begun in Atlanta, Boston, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis, Louisville, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Montgomery, Nashville, New Orleans, New York City, Richmond, and Pittsburgh. Similar projects are planned for other cities.

 Anti-social slum areas exist in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Richmond, Cleveland, Birmingham, Denver and Seattle, and other centers of population. “Despite the difference in character of these cities, their delinquency areas display similar characteristics — poor housing conditions; shifting and decreasing populations; great poverty and dependence; a marked absence of the home-owning class; a largely foreign population of inferior social status; unwholesome types of recreation; inadequate open-air play facilities.” 1 Report on the Causes of Crime — National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement — page LV, Report of Henry W. Anderson.
“Where slum clearance has been effected and the population rehoused in sanitary homes, a sharp decline in morbidity and mortality, as well as delinquency, has resulted. An excellent example is that of Liverpool. Rotten slums in the heart of the city inhabited by casual dock workers were destroyed and the buildings' replaced by new dwellings at low rentals. One clearance project restored 77 per cent, of its old population, and another 99 per cent. Yet among this same population after a short period in the new structures crime had decreased to less than 25 per cent, of its former incidence, death rates had dropped from 50 to 27 per thousand, tuberculosis from 4 to 1.9 per thousand, and other sickness accordingly.” 14 American Enc. of Social Science, 95.