Injunctions in Labor Disputes; the Norris-LaGuardia Act
The Norris-LaGuardia Act of 1932[631] is significant for its restrictions on the powers of the federal courts to issue injunctions in labor disputes in the form of requirements for hearings followed by findings that unlawful acts are threatened and will be committed unless restrained, or if already committed will be continued; that substantial injury to the property of complainants will ensue; that as to the relief granted greater injury will be inflicted upon complainants by denying relief than will be inflicted on defendants by granting it; that the complainants have no adequate remedy at law; and, finally, that the public officials charged with the protection of complainants' property are either unable or unwilling to do so. This act has been scrupulously applied by the Supreme Court, which has implicitly sustained its constitutionality by construing its restrictions liberally[632] in every case except United States v. United Mine Workers,[633] where it was held that the statute did not apply to suits brought by the United States to enjoin a strike in the coal industry while the Government technically was operating the mines.
JUDICIAL POWER EQUATED WITH DUE PROCESS OF LAW
Although the cases point to a plenary power in Congress to withhold jurisdiction from the inferior courts and to withdraw it at any time after it has been conferred, even as applied to pending cases, there are a few cases in addition to Martin v. Hunter's Lessee[634] which slightly qualify the cumulative effect of this impressive array of precedents. As early as 1856, the Supreme Court in Murray v. Hoboken Land and Improvement Co.[635] distinguished between matters of private right which from their nature were the subject of a suit at the common law, equity, or admiralty and cannot be withdrawn from judicial cognizance and those matters of public right which, though susceptible of judicial determination, did not require it and which might or might not be brought within judicial cognizance. Seventy-seven years later the Court elaborated this distinction in Crowell v. Benson,[636] which involved the finality to be accorded administrative findings of jurisdictional facts in compensation cases. In holding that an employer was entitled to a trial de novo of the constitutional jurisdictional facts of the matter of the employer-employee relationship and of the occurrence of the injury in interstate commerce, Chief Justice Hughes, speaking for the majority fused the due process clause of Amendment V and article III, but emphasized that the issue ultimately was "rather a question of the appropriate maintenance of the Federal judicial power," and "whether the Congress may substitute for constitutional courts, in which the judicial power of the United States is vested, an administrative agency * * * for the final determination of the existence of the facts upon which the enforcement of the constitutional rights of the citizen depend." To do so, contended the Chief Justice, "would be to sap the judicial power as it exists under the Federal Constitution and to establish a government of a bureaucratic character alien to our system, wherever constitutional rights depend, as not infrequently they do depend, upon the facts, and finality as to facts becomes in effect finality in law."[637]
JUDICIAL VERSUS NONJUDICIAL FUNCTIONS
The power of Congress to confer jurisdiction on the lower federal courts is qualified by the rule that before Congress can vest jurisdiction in the inferior courts, they must have the capacity to receive it. The capacity of the lower judiciary to receive jurisdiction is defined in the enumeration of cases and controversies in article III. Consequently in vesting courts with jurisdiction, Congress cannot go beyond this enumeration.[638] It follows from the rule that constitutional courts can perform only judicial functions that Congress, in vesting courts with jurisdiction, cannot impose upon them nonjudicial duties such as administering pensions,[639] deciding issues subject to later executive or legislative action,[640] rendering advisory opinions, or opinions which are not final and conclusive upon the parties,[641] or taking jurisdiction of matters from which any essential element of the judicial power has been abstracted.[642] To be sure, Congress may clothe some matters of an administrative nature with the mantle of a case or controversy and thereby make it a matter of judicial cognizance, as it has done with naturalization proceedings,[643] the administration of certain laws relating to the expulsion of aliens,[644] the limited administration of funds received from the Government of Mexico to compensate American citizens for claims against that government,[645] and, of course, the traditional administration of bankrupt enterprises through the medium of a receiver.
PROBLEMS RAISED BY CONCURRENCY
The American Federal System with its dual system of courts, exercising concurrent jurisdiction in a number of classes of cases, presents numerous possibilities of inter-court conflicts and interference. Subject to Congressional enactments to the contrary, the State courts have concurrent jurisdiction over all the classes of cases and controversies enumerated in article III except suits between States, those to which the United States is a party, those to which a foreign state is a party, and cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction. Even in admiralty cases the State courts, though unable to exercise any portion of admiralty or maritime jurisdiction by delegation or otherwise,[646] may have a concurrent jurisdiction when the same issues assume the form of a case at common law.[647] In addition to conflicts arising out of concurrent jurisdiction, relations between federal and State courts are exposed to other frictions, such as injunctions in one jurisdiction restraining judicial processes in another, the use of the writ of habeas corpus by a court of concurrent jurisdiction to release persons in custody of another, and the refusal by State courts to comply with orders of the Supreme Court. The relations between federal and State courts are governed in part by Constitutional Law with respect to State court interference with the federal courts and State court refusal to comply with the judgments of federal tribunals, by statutes as regards interference by federal courts with those of the States, and by self-imposed rules of comity applied for the avoidance of unseemly conflicts.
DISOBEDIENCE OF SUPREME COURT ORDERS BY STATE COURTS