Court Opinion

ID: 9479655
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:24:34.651365+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:47:10.884187
License: Public Domain

DAVID A. NELSON, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I agree that the judgment of dismissal must be vacated and the case remanded to the district court. Regardless of the merits of Commodities’ constitutional claim, however, I have difficulty understanding why the Court of International Trade does not almost certainly have exclusive jurisdiction of this action under 28 U.S.C. § 1581(i), and why the proper course for the district court to follow, on remand, would not almost certainly be to transfer the action to the Trade Court pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1631.
Under 28 U.S.C. § 1581(i), the Court of International Trade has “exclusive jurisdiction” over “any” civil action against the United States arising out of “any” federal law providing for, among other things, “(1) revenue from imports or tonnage; (2) tariffs, duties, fees, or other taxes on the importation of merchandise for reasons other than the raising of revenue; ... (4) administration and enforcement with respect to the matters referred to in paragraphs (l)-(3)_” Former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Eugene Rossides says that § 1581(i) was “evidently designed to assure that the new court, rather than the district courts, takes jurisdiction of any justiciable action challenging the administration of laws affecting import trade.” E. Rossides, U.S. Import Trade Regulation 537 (1986).
As far as I have been able to tell, Commodities can point to no facts the establishment of which would deprive the Court of International Trade of exclusive jurisdiction over the present case. It seems to me that the case clearly arises out of the administration and enforcement of laws dealing with imports of merchandise. If I am right in this, there is no need for an eviden-tiary hearing under Rule 12(d), Fed.R. Civ.P. And although'the district court might well find oral argument beneficial, the rule itself does not require it; motions to dismiss are “heard” all the time on papers filed by the parties, just as this court often hears and determines appeals without oral argument.
The possibility that the district court may have exercised jurisdiction properly when this case was originally filed in 1976, before enactment of the current statutory scheme, does not change my view that Commodities’ request for the relief it now seeks ought to be determined by the Court *440of International Trade. On the record before us, I see no reason why it would not be in the interest of justice to transfer the action to that court in accordance with the mandate of 28 U.S.C. § 1631. I agree that the question of a transfer under § 1631 needs to be addressed in the first instance by the district court, however, rather than this court, and I believe our remand to the district court is appropriate for that reason. If the district court does not consider a transfer appropriate, it needs to say why.