Court Opinion

ID: 8144832
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-09-09 20:21:11.459766+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:39:33.911994
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice McReynolds,
dissenting.
It seems to me quite clear that the record presents no justiciable controversy; certainly none within the original jurisdiction of this Court.
For the manifest purpose of protecting local consumers, West Virginia commanded her public service corporations not to transport natural gas beyond the borders of the State until they had satisfied the reasonable requirements of the people therein. Thereupon, complainants came here by original bills and alleged that if the statute were enforced they and their inhabitants could not obtain enough gas for their imperative demands from the divers pipe lines theretofore accustomed to supply them. They ask us to declare the enactment invalid because of conflict with the commerce clause of the Federal Constitution and to restrain its enforcement. If the pipe lines hereafter fail to comply with their contracts, of course, they may be proceeded against in a proper forum; but to say that they probably will fail because *604of the statute and then to demand that the law-making power be enjoined is not to set up a real controversy cognizable in any court.
If West Virginia should prohibit the drilling of new gas wells, I hardly suppose complainants could demand an injunction here even if it were admitted that their supplies would be cut off. But why not, under the doctrine announced? Production has been permitted for years and appealing hardships would follow its cessation. And suppose West Virginia should repeal the charters of all her public service corporations now transporting gas and thereby disable them, could we interfere upon the demand of another State who claimed that she would suffer?
As originally adopted, the Constitution provided — “ In all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, and those in which a State shall be party, the Supreme Court shall have original jurisdiction.” Chisholm v. Georgia, 2 Dall. 419, declared that a citizen of one State could proceed against another State by original action here. In Louisiana v. Texas, 176 U. S. 1, Mr. Chief Justice Fuller pointed out the character of controversies between States over which this Court has original jurisdiction. With emphasis he declared that vindication of the freedom of interstate commerce is not committed to any State as parens patriae. Unless this ruling is to pass into the discard, it follows that neither of the complainants has any higher standing than one of her citizens with a contract for gas would have if there were no Eleventh Amendment. It is unnecessary to argue that the framers of the Constitution never intended to empower this Court, at the suit of an individual, to enjoin a State from enforcing regulations prescribed for her own public service corporations. And yet, that possibility must be affirmed under the doctrine now announced.
*605Concluding his opinion in Chisholm v. Georgia (1793), Mr. Justice Iredell exclaimed — “ I pray to God, that if the Attorney General’s doctrine, as to the law, be estab-. lished by the judgment of this Court, all the good he predicts from it may take place, and none of the evils with which, I have the concern to say, it appears to me to be pregnant.” A like prayer seems not inappropriate here and now.