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[ { "content": "What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: \"Criminal Procedure\" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. \"Civil rights\" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. \"First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. \"Due process\" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. \"Privacy\" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. \"Attorneys\" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. \"Unions\" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. \"Economic activity\" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. \"Judicial power\" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. \"Federalism\" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. \"Federal taxation\" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. \"Private law\" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use \"Miscellaneous\" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.\n\nMr. Justice Jackson\ndelivered the opinion of the Court.\nAs this suit in equity was commenced in United States District Court it sought two kinds of specific relief: (1) a declaratory judgment that complainant’s carriage of motion picture film and newsreels between points in Utah constitutes interstate commerce; (2) that the Public Service Commission of Utah and its members be forever enjoined from interfering with such transportation over routes authorized by the Interstate Commerce Commission.\nThe complaint alleged a course of importing, processing and transporting picture film and newsreels to support the contention that carriage between points in Utah was so integrated with their interstate movement that the whole constituted interstate commerce. It averred that the Commission and its members “threaten to and are attempting to stop and prevent plaintiff from transporting motion picture film and newsreels between points and places within the State of Utah, and they are thereby interfering with the conduct of interstate commerce by the plaintiff and imposing an undue burden upon interstate commerce,” and that unless the defendants are enjoined they will “block, harass and prevent plaintiff in the transportation of said motion picture film and newsreels in Utah.”\nThe Commission and its members answered that respondent’s transportation between points in Utah was nothing more than intrastate commerce. They specifically denied attempting, threatening, or intending to interfere with or burden interstate commerce.\nThe District Court, after trial, sustained the contention of the Commission and dismissed the complaint. The Court of Appeals considered only “whether the intrastate transportations are nonetheless integral parts of interstate transportations.” It held the evidence to warrant an affirmative answer, reversed the judgment of the District Court and ordered further proceedings in conformity with that view. We granted certiorari, requesting counsel to discuss whether a single judge could hear and determine the case in view of 28 U. S. C. § 2281. That section provides that an injunction restraining enforcement of a state statute or the order of an administrative body thereunder “shall not be granted” upon the ground of unconstitutionality unless the application is heard and determined by a district court of three judges as provided in 28 U. S. C. § 2284.\nThe respondent, which was plaintiff, contends that a three-judge court was not required, because the suit does not question constitutionality of any Utah statute nor the validity of any order of the State Commission. It says also that no injunction has been granted or even urged “outside of the naked recitation in the prayer of the Complaint.” It offered no evidence whatever of any past, pending or threatened action by the Utah Commission touching its business in any respect. The pleadings made that a clear-cut issue, which seems to have been completely ignored thereafter. The only issues defined on pretrial hearing were whether as matter of fact and of law the within-state transportation constituted interstate commerce. The trial court, however, made a general finding that no such interference had been made or threatened, which was not reversed or mentioned by the Court of Appeals.\nFor more reasons than one it is clear that this proceeding cannot result in an injunction on constitutional grounds. In addition to defects that will appear in our discussion of declaratory relief, it is wanting in equity because there is no proof of any threatened or probable act of the defendants which might cause the irreparable injury essential to equitable relief by injunction.\nThe respondent appears to have abandoned the suit as one for injunction but seeks to support it as one for declaratory judgment, hoping thereby to avoid both the three-judge court requirement and the necessity for proof of threatened injury. Whether declaratory relief is appropriate under the circumstances of this case apparently was not considered by either of the courts below. But that inquiry is one which every grant of this remedy must survive.\nThe Declaratory Judgment Act of 1934, now 28 U. S. C. § 2201, styled “creation of remedy,” provides that in a case of actual controversy a competent court may “declare the rights and other legal relations” of a party “whether or not further relief is or could be sought.” This is an enabling Act, which confers a discretion on the courts rather than an absolute right upon the litigant.\nPrevious to its enactment there were responsible expressions of doubt that constitutional limitations on federal judicial power would permit any federal declaratory judgment procedure. Cf. Liberty Warehouse Co. v. Grannis, 273 U. S. 70; Willing v. Chicago Auditorium Assn., 277 U. S. 274; Arizona v. California, 283 U. S. 423; Piedmont & N. R. Co. v. United States, 280 U. S. 469. Finally, as the practice extended in the states, we reviewed a declaratory judgment rendered by a state court and held that a controversy which would be justiciable in this Court if presented in a suit for injunction is not the less so because the relief was declaratory. Nashville, C. & St. L. R. Co. v. Wallace, 288 U. S. 249. Encouraged by this and guided by the experience of the thirty-four states that had enacted such laws, the Senate Judiciary Committee recommended an adaptation of the principle to federal practice. Its enabling clause was narrower than that of the Uniform Act adopted in 1921 by the Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, which gave comprehensive power to declare rights, status and other legal relations. The Federal Act omits status and limits the declaration to cases of actual controversy.\nThis Act was adjudged constitutional only by interpreting it to confine the declaratory remedy within conventional “case or controversy” limits. In Ashwander v. Tennessee Valley Authority, 297 U. S. 288, 325, the Court said, “The Act of June 14, 1934, providing for declaratory judgments, does not attempt to change the essential requisites for the exercise of judicial power” which still was to be tested by such established principles as that “the judicial power does not extend to the determination of abstract questions” and that “claims based merely upon 'assumed potential invasions’ of rights are not enough to warrant judicial intervention.”\nIn Aetna Life Insurance Co. v. Haworth, 300 U. S. 227, Mr. Chief Justice Hughes used the whole catalogue of familiar phrases to define and delimit the measure of this new remedy. If its metes and bounds are not clearly marked, it is because his available verbal markers are themselves elastic, inconstant and imprecise. It applies, he points out, only to “cases and controversies in the constitutional sense” of a nature “consonant with the exercise of the judicial function” and “appropriate for judicial determination.” Each must present a “justiciable controversy” as distinguished from “a difference or dispute of a hypothetical or abstract character .... The controversy must be definite and concrete, touching the legal relations of parties having adverse legal interests. . . . It must be a real and substantial controversy admitting of specific relief through a decree of a conclusive character, as' distinguished from an opinion advising what the law would be upon a hypothetical state of facts.” The relief is available only for a “concrete case admitting of an immediate and definitive determination of the legal rights of the parties.” Id., at 240, 241.\nOther sources have stated relevant limitations. The Senate Judiciary Committee report regarded the 1,200 American decisions theretofore rendered on the subject as establishing that “the issue must be real, the question practical and not academic, and the decision must finally settle and determine the controversy.” Indeed the Uniform Act, unlike the Federal Act, expressly declares the discretion of the court to refuse a decree that would not “terminate the uncertainty or controversy giving rise to the proceeding.” In recommending Rule 57 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, in order to provide procedures for the declaratory decree, the Committee noted “A declaration may not be rendered if a special statutory proceeding has been provided for the adjudication of some special type of case . . . .”\nBut when all of the axioms have been exhausted and all words of definition have been spent, the propriety of declaratory relief in a particular case will depend upon a circumspect sense of its fitness informed by the teachings and experience concerning the functions and extent of federal judicial power. While the courts should not be reluctant or niggardly in granting this relief in the cases for which it was designed, they must be alert to avoid imposition upon their jurisdiction through obtaining futile or premature interventions, especialy in the field of public law. A maximum of caution is necessary in the type of litigation that we have here, where a ruling is sought that would reach far beyond the particular case. Such differ-enees of opinion or conflicts of interest must be “ripe for determination” as controversies over legal rights. The disagreement must not be nebulous or contingent but must have taken on fixed and final shape so that a court can see what legal issues it is deciding, what effect its decision will have on the adversaries, and some useful purpose to be achieved in deciding them.\nThe complainant in this case does not request an adjudication that it has a right to do, or to have, anything in particular. It does not ask a judgment that the Commission is without power to enter any specific order or take any concrete regulatory step. It seeks simply to establish that, as presently conducted, respondent’s carriage of goods between points within as well as without Utah is all interstate commerce. One naturally asks, “So what?” To that ultimate question no answer is sought.\nA multitude of rights and immunities may be predicated upon the premise that a business consists of interstate commerce. What are the specific ones in controversy? The record is silent and counsel little more articulate. We may surmise that the purpose to be served by a declaratory judgment is ultimately the same as respondent’s explanation of the purposes of the injunction it originally asked, which is “to guard against the possibility that said Commission would attempt to prevent respondent from operating under its certificate from the Interstate Commerce Commission.” (Emphasis supplied.)\nIn this connection, Wycoff Co. v. Public Service Commission, -Utah -, 227 P. 2d 323 (1951), is brought to our attention. From this it appears that respondent and its predecessors in interest long made it a practice to obtain from the Utah Commission certificates to authorize this carriage of film commodities between points in Utah. But the Supreme Court of Utah, in the cited case, sustained the Commission in denying such an application upon a finding that the field already was adequately served. We are also told that the Commission filed a petition in a Utah state court to enjoin respondent from operating between a few specified locations within the State, but that process was never served and nothing in the record tells us what has happened to this action. We may conjecture that respondent fears some form of administrative or judicial action to prohibit its service on routes wholly within the State without the Commission’s leave. What respondent asks is that it win any such case before it is commenced. Even if respondent is engaged solely in interstate commerce, we cannot say that there is nothing whatever that the State may require. Eichholz v. Commission, 306 U. S. 268, 273.\nA declaratory judgment may be the basis of further relief necessary or proper against the adverse party (28 U. S. C. § 2202). The carrier’s idea seems to be that it can now establish the major premise of an exemption, not as an incident of any present declaration of any specific right or immunity, but to hold in readiness for use should the Commission at any future time attempt to apply any part of a complicated regulatory statute to it. If there is any more definite or contemporaneous purpose to this case, neither this record nor the briefs make it clear to us. We think this for several reasons exceeds any permissible discretionary use of the Federal Declaratory Judgment Act.\nIn the first place, this dispute has not matured to a point where we can see what, if any, concrete controversy will develop. It is much like asking a declaration that the State has no power to enact legislation that may be under consideration but has not yet shaped up into an enactment. If there is any risk of suffering penalty, liability or prosecution, which a declaration would avoid, it is not pointed out to us. If and when the State Commission takes some action that raises an issue of its power, some further declaration would be necessary to any complete relief. The proposed decree cannot end the controversy.\nNor is it apparent that the present proceeding would serve a useful purpose if at some future date the State undertakes regulation of respondent. After a sifting of evidence and a finding of facts as they are today, there is no assurance that changes of significance may not take place before the State decides to move. Of course, the remedy is not to be withheld because it necessitates weighing conflicting evidence or deciding issues of fact as well as law. That is the province of courts. Aetna Life Insurance Co. v. Haworth, supra, at 242, and see Perkins v. Elg, 307 U. S. 325; Currin v. Wallace, 306 U. S. 1. But when the request is not for ultimate determination of rights but for preliminary findings and conclusions intended to fortify the litigant against future regulation, it would be a rare case in which the relief should be granted. Cf. Coffman v. Breeze Corporations, Inc., 323 U.S. 316.\nEven when there is no incipient federal-state conflict, the declaratory judgment procedure will not be used to pre-empt and prejudge issues that are committed for initial decision to an administrative body or special tribunal any more than it will be used as a substitute for statutory methods of review. It would not be tolerable, for example, that declaratory judgments establish that an enterprise is not in interstate commerce in order to forestall proceedings by the National Labor Relations Board, the Interstate Commerce Commission or many agencies that are authorized to try and decide such an issue in the first instance. Cf. Myers v. Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corp., 303 U. S. 41; Eccles v. Peoples Bank, 333 U. S. 426. See Colegrove v. Green, 328 U. S. 549. Responsibility for effective functioning of the administrative process cannot be thus transferred from the bodies in which Congress has placed it to the courts.\nBut, as the declaratory proceeding is here invoked, it is even less appropriate because, in addition to foreclosing an administrative body, it is incompatible with a proper federal-state relationship. The carrier, being in some disagreement with the State Commission, rushed into federal court to get a declaration which either is intended in ways not disclosed to tie the Commission’s hands before it can act or it has no purpose at all.\nDeclaratory proceedings in the federal courts against state officials must be decided with regard for the implications of our federal system. State administrative bodies have the initial right to reduce the general policies of state regulatory statutes into concrete orders and the primary right to take evidence and make findings of fact. It is the state courts which have the first and the last word as to the meaning of state statutes and whether a particular order is within the legislative terms of reference so as to make it the action of the State. We have disapproved anticipatory declarations as to state regulatory statutes, even where the case originated in and was entertained by courts of the State affected. Alabama State Federation of Labor v. McAdory, 325 U. S. 450. Anticipatory judgment by a federal court to frustrate action by a state agency is even less tolerable to our federalism. Is the declaration contemplated here to be res judicata, so that the Commission cannot hear evidence and decide any matter for itself? If so, the federal court has virtually lifted the case out of the State Commission before it could be heard. If not, the federal judgment serves no useful purpose as a final determination of rights.\nThe procedures of review usually afford ample protection to a carrier whose federal rights are actually invaded, and there are remedies for threatened irreparable injuries. State courts are bound equally with the federal courts by the Federal Constitution and laws. Ultimate recourse may be had to this Court by certiorari if a state court has allegedly denied a federal right.\nIn this case, as in many actions for declaratory judgment, the realistic position of the parties is reversed. The plaintiff is seeking to establish a defense against a cause of action which the declaratory defendant may assert in the Utah courts. Respondent here has sought to ward off possible action of the petitioners by seeking a declaratory judgment to the effect that he will have a good defense when and if that cause of action is asserted. Where the complaint in an action for declaratory judgment seeks in essence to assert a defense to an impending or threatened state court action, it is the character of the threatened action, and not of the defense, which will determine whether there is federal-question jurisdiction in the District Court. If the cause of action, which the declaratory defendant threatens to assert, does not itself involve a claim under federal law, it is doubtful if a federal court may entertain an action for a declaratory judgment establishing a defense to that claim. This is dubious even though the declaratory complaint sets forth a claim of federal right, if that right is in reality in the nature of a defense to a threatened cause of action. Federal courts will not seize litigations from state courts merely because one, normally a defendant, goes to federal court to begin his federal-law defense before the state court begins the case under state law. Tennessee v. Union & Planters’ Bank, 152 U. S. 454; The Fair v. Kohler Die & Specialty Co., 228 U. S. 22; Taylor v. Anderson, 234 U. S. 74.\nSince this case should be dismissed in any event, it is not necessary to determine whether, on this record, the alleged controversy over an action that may be begun in state court would be maintainable under the head of federal-question jurisdiction. But we advert to doubts upon that subject to indicate the injury that would be necessary if the case clearly rested merely on threatened suit in state court, as, for all we can learn, it may.\nWe conclude that this suit cannot be entertained as one for injunction and should not be continued as one for a declaratory judgment. The judgment below should be reversed and modified to direct that the action be dismissed.\nReversed and so ordered.\n195 F. 2d 252.\n343 U. S. 975.\nSee 28 U. S. C. § 2201.\nS. Rep. No. 1005, 73d Cong., 2d Sess., p. 6, May 10, 1934; Borchard, Declaratory Judgments (2d ed. 1941), 1043, 1048.\nBorchard, op. cit., 1042.\nSee, Developments in the Law — Declaratory Judgments, 62 Harv. L. Rev. 787, 802.\n\nQuestion: What is the issue area of the decision?\nA. Criminal Procedure\nB. Civil Rights\nC. First Amendment\nD. Due Process\nE. Privacy\nF. Attorneys\nG. Unions\nH. Economic Activity\nI. Judicial Power\nJ. Federalism\nK. Interstate Relations\nL. Federal Taxation\nM. Miscellaneous\nN. Private Action\nAnswer:", "role": "user" }, { "content": " I", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: \"Criminal Procedure\" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. \"Civil rights\" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. \"First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. \"Due process\" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. \"Privacy\" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. \"Attorneys\" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. \"Unions\" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. \"Economic activity\" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. \"Judicial power\" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. \"Federalism\" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. \"Federal taxation\" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. \"Private law\" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use \"Miscellaneous\" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.\n\nJustice Powell\ndelivered the opinion of the Court.\nThe question presented is whether a United States district court may compel the United States Marshals Service to transport state prisoners to the federal courthouse to testify in an action brought under 42 U. S. C. § 1983 by a state prisoner against county officials.\nI — <\nIn June 1980, Richard Garland brought suit under 42 U. S. C. § 1983 against various Philadelphia County officials in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, alleging that he had been beaten and harassed by the defendant deputy sheriffs and prison guards. At the time Garland filed this suit, he was incarcerated in the Philadelphia County jail, but was subsequently transferred to a state facility. The District Court assigned the action to a Magistrate for disposition on the merits.\nIn December 1982, the Magistrate issued writs of habeas corpus ad testificandum to produce five witnesses, including plaintiff Garland. At that time, Garland was in a state correctional facility in Huntingdon, approximately 220 miles from Philadelphia. The other four witnesses were all confined in state facilities over 100 miles from Philadelphia. The orders directed the Wardens of the state facilities to transport inmates from state prison to the county jail nearest the federal courthouse in Philadelphia. The orders then commanded the United States Marshals Service (Marshals) to transport the inmates from that county facility to the federal court and to maintain custody of them during trial. The Marshals unsuccessfully moved for reconsideration of that portion of the order that directed them to transport the state prisoners from the county jail to the federal courthouse and to guard them during trial.\nOn the Marshals’ appeal from this denial, the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reversed in part, holding that the All Writs Act did not confer power upon the District Court “to compel non-custodians to bear the expense of [the production of witnesses] simply because they have access to a deeper pocket.” Garland v. Sullivan, 737 F. 2d 1283, 1287 (1984) (emphasis in original). The Court of Appeals did find, however, that the District Court has the power to compel the Marshals to take custody of state prisoners while those prisoners are in the federal courthouse in connection with federal judicial proceedings. Ibid. Finally, the court held that the District Court could order the Marshals to take custody of state prisoners if the trial court made a specific finding that special security risks required that state prisoner-witnesses be in the Marshals’ custody away from the federal courthouse. Id., at 1289.\nThe Commonwealth Bureau of Correction (Commonwealth) petitioned this Court for a writ of certiorari on the question whether a federal court can command the Marshals to share responsibility with state officials for transporting state inmates to the federal courthouse when neither the State nor any state official is a party. Because this case presents a recurrent problem on which the Circuits differ, we granted the writ. 469 U. S. 1206 (1985). We find that there is no statutory authority for a United States district court to command the Marshals to take custody of state prisoners outside the federal courthouse during the normal course of producing state prisoner-witnesses for trial, and accordingly affirm.\nII\nThe Commonwealth argues that the Marshals have a statutory obligation to obey the lawful orders and writs of the federal courts, 28 U. S. C. § 569(b), and are statutorily authorized to expend funds for the specific purpose of transporting prisoners, § 567. It also contends that these provisions recognize the authority of the district courts to seek assistance from the Marshals. Two Circuits have summarily agreed. Ford v. Allen, 728 F. 2d 1369, 1370 (CA11 1984) (per curiam); Ballard v. Spradley, 557 F. 2d 476, 481 (CA5 1977). Two other Circuits have relied in part on these provisions in imposing the responsibility for transport upon the Marshals. Wiggins v. County of Alameda, 717 F. 2d 466 (CA9 1983), cert. denied sub nom. California Dept. of Corrections v. United States, 465 U. S. 1070 (1984); Ford v. Carballo, 577 F. 2d 404 (CA7 1978). The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit is the only Circuit to deny a district court authority to compel the Marshals to assist in transporting state prisoner-witnesses to the federal courthouse.\nSections 569(b) and 567 merely enumerate obligations of the Marshals. The Marshals must obey the mandates of federal courts and transport prisoners if the court so orders. The courts’ authority to issue such writs, however, must derive from some independent statutory source. We therefore must look to the habeas corpus statute or the All Writs Act to see if they authorize federal courts to order the transportation of state prisoners to the federal courthouse.\nr-4 HH » — I\nThe Court of Appeals reasoned that the Magistrate’s order amounted to a writ of habeas corpus ad testificandum properly directed only to the custodian, and that there was no basis in the habeas corpus statute for the District Court’s authority to direct a writ ad testificandum to a noncustodian. We agree.\nSince 1867, the writ of habeas corpus has incorporated the common-law command that the writ “shall be directed to the person in whose custody the party is detained.” Act of Feb. 5, 1867, ch. 28, 14 Stat. 386 (emphasis added). See In re Thaw, 166 F. 71, 74-75 (CA3 1908). It was the custodian who then was to “make return of said writ and bring the party before the judge who granted the writ.” Ibid. Congress preserved this unambiguous directive throughout subsequent revisions, and the current habeas corpus statute states that the writ “shall be directed to the person having custody of the person detained.” 28 U. S. C. §2243. Section 2243 also specifically provides that “the person to whom the writ is directed shall be required to produce at the hearing the body of the person detained.”\nThe language of the statute thus expressly commands the custodian to bring his prisoner to the court, but extends this duty to no other. See also Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 81(a)(2) (“The writ of habeas corpus . . . shall be directed to the person having custody of the person detained”). We find no evidence in the language of §§ 2241 and 2243, in their legislative history, or in the common-law writ ad testificandum to suggest that courts are also empowered to cause third parties who are neither custodians nor parties to the litigation to bear the cost of producing the prisoner in a federal court. We therefore conclude that there is no basis in the habeas corpus statute for a federal court to order the Marshals to transport state prisoners to the federal courthouse.\n> hH\nFinally, the Commonwealth argues that the All Writs Act, 28 U. S. C. § 1651, confers authority upon a district court to order the Marshals to transport state prisoners to and from the federal courthouse in connection with federal litigation. It argues that the “deluge of. . . civil rights actions” calls for “creative” use of federal judicial power to alleviate the drain on the States’ fiscs from the transport of inmates to and from federal courthouses.\nIt is true that this Court consistently has construed the All Writs Act to authorize a federal court “to issue such commands ... as may be necessary or appropriate to effectuate and prevent the frustration of orders it has previously issued in its exercise of jurisdiction otherwise obtained.” United States v. New York Telephone Co., 434 U. S. 159, 172 (1977). This Court also has held that the supplemental powers of the Act are not limited to situations where it is “necessary” to issue the writ or order “in the sense that the court could not otherwise physically discharge its appellate duties.” Adams v. United States ex rel. McCann, 317 U. S. 269, 273 (1942). An examination of the language of the All Writs Act, its legislative history, and our decisions construing it convinces us, however, that the Act does not authorize a district court to order the Marshals to transport state prisoners from state prisons to the federal courthouse in the ordinary course of litigation in federal courts.\nThe All Writs Act originally was codified in § 14 of the Judiciary Act of 1789, 1 Stat. 81-82, which provided that\n“all the . . . courts of the United States, shall have power to issue writs of scire facias, habeas corpus, and all other writs not specifically provided for by statute, which may be necessary for the exercise of their respective jurisdictions, and agreeable to the principles and usages of law.”\nOur early view of the scope of the all writs provision confined it to filling the interstices of federal judicial power when those gaps threatened to thwart the otherwise proper exercise of federal courts’ jurisdiction. McClung v. Silliman, 6 Wheat. 598 (1821); McIntire v. Wood, 7 Cranch 504 (1813). This limitation is especially significant in construing federal courts’ power to issue writs of habeas corpus ad testifican-dum: The Judiciary Act of 1789 codified the ad testificandum writ in the same section as the all writs provision.\nThe original phrase “not specifically provided for by statute” remained in the all writs section until 1948. Although the legislative history is scant, it appears that Congress then merely consolidated various provisions into § 1651 and made “necessary changes in phraseology” without substantive amendment. See H. R. Rep. No. 308, 80th Cong., 1st Sess., A144 (1947); see also id., at 5. The legislative history did, however, state that the new section was “expressive of the construction recently placed upon [the all writs provision] by the Supreme Court in U. S. Alkali Export Assn. [v. United States, 325 U. S. 196 (1945)].” Id., at A145. In United States Alkali, the Court rejected use of the all writs provision to enable the Court to review a lower court’s determination where jurisdiction did not lie under an express statutory provision. Chief Justice Stone wrote:\n“The writs may not be used as a substitute for an authorized appeal; and where, as here, the statutory scheme permits appellate review of interlocutory orders only on appeal from the final judgment, review by certiorari or other extraordinary writ is not permissible in the face of the plain indication of the legislative purpose to avoid piecemeal reviews.” 325 U. S., at 203.\nAlthough Congress dropped the phrase “not specifically provided for by statute” in its 1948 consolidation, we conclude that it apparently intended to leave the all writs provision substantially unchanged. That intention and the favorable reference to United States Alkali convince us that the 1948 changes in phraseology do not mark a congressional expansion of the powers of federal courts to authorize issuance of any “appropriate” writ.\nNevertheless, the Commonwealth, relying on United States v. New York Telephone Co., supra, at 171, as well as Harris v. Nelson, 394 U. S. 286, 299 (1969), and Price v. Johnston, 334 U. S. 266, 282 (1948), insists that under the All Writs Act the District Court can order the Marshals to transport state prisoners upon a mere statement that such an order would be “necessary or appropriate.” As summarized in the margin below, these cases are clearly distinguishable and lend little support to the Commonwealth’s argument.\nThe All Writs Act is a residual source of authority to issue writs that are not otherwise covered by statute. Where a statute specifically addresses the particular issue at hand, it is that authority, and not the All Writs Act, that is controlling. Although that Act empowers federal courts to fashion extraordinary remedies when the need arises, it does not authorize them to issue ad hoc writs whenever compliance with statutory procedures appears inconvenient or less appropriate. We need not categorically rule out reliance on the All Writs Act and the use of Marshals in procuring or safeguarding state prisoner-witnesses in the course of federal litigation. There may be exceptional circumstances in which a district court can show clearly the inadequacy of traditional habeas corpus writs, such as where there are serious security risks. In such circumstances, a district court may find it “necessary or appropriate” for Marshals to transport state prisoners. We therefore leave open the question of the availability of the All Writs Act to authorize such an order where exceptional circumstances require it.\nV\nWe conclude, at least in the absence of an express finding of exceptional circumstances, that neither a magistrate nor a district court has authority to order the Marshals to transport state prisoners to the federal courthouse to testify in an action brought by a state prisoner under 42 U. S. C. § 1983 against county officials. Accordingly, we affirm the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.\nIt is so ordered.\nThe Marshals are within the Executive Branch of the Federal Government. The Marshal for each district is appointed by the President, 28 U. S. C. § 561(a), is subject to the supervision and direction of the Attorney General, see, e. g., §§562, 567, 569(c), 571(a) and (d), and is funded through Department of Justice appropriations, e. g., §567.\nJudge Becker concurred in the judgment, believing the court to be bound by McClung v. Silliman, 6 Wheat. 598 (1821), and McIntire v. Wood, 7 Cranch 504 (1813). He hoped that this Court would “find that, because statutes can adapt to fit the needs of changing times, the All Writs Act now permits what, in the time of Mclntire and McClung it did not.” 737 F. 2d, at 1292 (footnote omitted). Judge Atkins, sitting by designation from the Southern District of Florida, concurred in part and dissented in part, believing that the Third Circuit could impose a duty on the Marshals to transport state prisoners. Ibid.\nThe propriety of that part of the order commanding the Marshals to take custody of the state prisoners while they are in the federal courthouse is not specifically before us. The Marshals have conceded that they are responsible for the custody of state prisoners in the federal courthouse as witnesses or parties.\nThe habeas corpus statute provides in pertinent part that the writ “shall be directed to the person having custody of the person detained,” and that “the person to whom the writ is directed shall be required to produce at the hearing the body of the person detained.” 28 U. S. C. §2243.\nCarbo v. United States, 364 U. S. 611 (1961), does not support an expansive reading of the power conferred upon federal district courts by the writ of habeas corpus ad testificandum. In Carbo, the Court found that although § 2241 contained an express territorial limitation of “[w]rits of habeas corpus,” 28 U. S. C. § 2241(a), the limitation applied to habeas corpus ad subjiciendum, but not to habeas corpus ad prosequendum. The Commonwealth similarly argues that the provisions in § 2243 that direct the custodian to produce the prisoners in court do not apply to the writ ad testificandum but instead are limited to the Great Writ, habeas corpus ad subjiciendum.\nCarbo’s expansive reading of the statute was consistent with common-law procedure and requirements applied to the writ ad prosequendum and with the legislative history of § 2241(a). 364 U. S., at 615-618. But this ease involves the writ ad testificandum, which has been confined in its application to the actual custodian of the prisoners from before its initial codification in 1789 to the present. We therefore do not believe that Carbo justifies a more expansive view of the writ of habeas corpus ad testificandum today.\nThe All Writs Act provides in pertinent part:\n“The Supreme Court and all courts established by Act of Congress may issue all writs necessary or appropriate in aid of their respective jurisdictions and agreeable to the usages and principles of law.”\nIn United States v. New York Telephone Co., 484 U. S. 159 (1977), the Court held that a District Court could under the All Writs Act compel a third party, the New York Telephone Company, to assist the Federal Bureau of Investigation in installing devices under a warrant that would register the numbers dialed on certain telephones. In that case the All Writs Act filled a gap in federal statutes by granting the District Court jurisdiction over the only party capable of installing the devices. In the instant case, by contrast, the habeas corpus statute already expressly provides for the issuance of a writ “to the person having custody of the person detained.”\nIn Price v. Johnston, 334 U. S. 266 (1948), the Court held that a Court of Appeals could order a prisoner to be brought before it to argue his own appeal, finding that the All Writs Act was a mechanism to achieve the “rational ends of law. ” Id., at 282. In Price, however, there was no alternative way to bring the prisoner before the court. In the present ease, the traditional writ ad testificandum is sufficient. Similarly, Harris v. Nelson, 394 U. S. 286 (1969), held that the District Court in that case had no alternative means of providing an effective habeas corpus proceeding except by use of an extraordinary writ. New York Telephone, Price, and Harris afforded resort to the All Writs Act to fill statutory interstices. We do not find their reasoning controlling here, where a writ ad testifican- dum directed to the custodian indisputably provides a district court with a means of producing a prisoner-witness.\n\nQuestion: What is the issue area of the decision?\nA. Criminal Procedure\nB. Civil Rights\nC. First Amendment\nD. Due Process\nE. Privacy\nF. Attorneys\nG. Unions\nH. Economic Activity\nI. Judicial Power\nJ. Federalism\nK. Interstate Relations\nL. Federal Taxation\nM. Miscellaneous\nN. Private Action\nAnswer:", "role": "user" }, { "content": " I", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: \"Criminal Procedure\" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. \"Civil rights\" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. \"First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. \"Due process\" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. \"Privacy\" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. \"Attorneys\" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. \"Unions\" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. \"Economic activity\" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. \"Judicial power\" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. \"Federalism\" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. \"Federal taxation\" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. \"Private law\" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use \"Miscellaneous\" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.\n\nMr. Chief Justice Burger\ndelivered the opinion of the Court.\nWe granted certiorari to resolve a conflict in the Circuits over whether the federal courts in a federal criminal prosecution should recognize a legislative privilege barring the introduction of evidence of the legislative acts of a state legislator charged with taking bribes or otherwise obtaining money unlawfully through exploitation of his official position. 441 U. S. 942 (1979).\nI\nRespondent Edgar H. Gillock was indicted on August 12, 1976, in the Western District of Tennessee on five counts of obtaining money under color of official right in violation of 18 U. S. C. § 1951, one count of using an interstate facility to distribute a bribe in violation of 18 U. S. C. § 1952, and one count of participating in an enterprise through a pattern of racketeering activity in violation of 18 U. S. C. § 1962. The indictment charged Gillock, then a Tennessee state senator and practicing attorney, with accepting money as a fee for using his public office to block the extradition of a defendant from Tennessee to Illinois, and for agreeing to introduce in the State General Assembly legislation which would enable four persons to obtain master electricians’ licenses they had been unable to obtain by way of existing examination processes.\nBefore trial, Gillock moved to suppress all evidence relating to his legislative activities. The District Court granted his motion, holding that as a state senator, Gillock had an eviden-tiary privilege cognizable under Rule 501 of the Federal Rules of Evidence. This privilege, deemed by the District Court to be equivalent to that granted Members of both Houses of Congress under the Speech or Debate Clause, Art. I, § 6, cl. 1, was limited to prohibiting the introduction of evidence of Gillock’s legislative acts and his underlying motivations. The coürt stated that the privilege is necessary “to protect the integrity of the [state’s] legislative process by insuring the independence of individual legislators” and “to preserve the constitutional relation between our federal and state governments in our federal system.”\nThe Government appealed the pretrial suppression order to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, see 18 U. S. C. § 3731, which vacated the order and remanded for additional consideration. 559 F. 2d 1222 (1977). The Court of Appeals noted that although the District Court had expressed its willingness to recognize a legislative privilege, it had not applied the principle to particularizo items of evidence.\nOn remand, the Government submitted a formal offer of proof and requested a ruling on the applicability of the legislative privilege to 15 specifically described items of evidence. The offer first detailed the evidence the Government proposed to introduce at trial in support of the count of the indictment charging Gillock with soliciting money from one Ruth Howard in exchange for using his influence as a state senator to block the extradition of Howard’s brother, James Michael Williams. Williams had been arrested in Tennessee in November 1974, and was being held as a fugitive from Illinois. According to the offer of proof, in January 1975 Howard met in Memphis with her brother’s attorney, John Hundley, who allegedly told her that he had a “friend” who could help her brother. A meeting between Gillock and Howard was arranged by Hund-ley, and Gillock agreed to exercise his influence to block the extradition for a fee.\nThe Government declared its intention to prove that on March 6, 1975, Gillock appeared at Williams’ extradition hearing. Although he denied that he was attending the hearing either as an attorney or in his capacity as a state senator, Gillock reviewed the extradition papers and questioned the hearing officer about the propriety of extradition on a misdemeanor charge. Later that day, Gillock requested an official opinion from the Tennessee Attorney General concerning “Extradition on a Misdemeanor.”\nIn addition, the Government stated it intended to introduce at trial the transcript of a telephone call Gillock made to Howard on March 25, 1975. During that conversation, Gil-lock allegedly advised Howard that he had delayed the extradition proceedings, and could have blocked them entirely, by exerting pressure on the extradition hearing officer who had appeared before Gillock’s senate judiciary committee on a budgetary matter. To corroborate that conversation, the Government indicated it would prove that on March 19, 1975, Gillock attended a meeting of the senate judiciary committee where the same extradition hearing officer who conducted Williams’ extradition hearing presented his department’s budget request.\nNext, the Government recited the evidence it proposed to introduce showing that Gillock used his influence as a member of the Tennessee State Senate to assist four individuals in obtaining master electricians’ licenses valid in Shelby County, Tenn. According to the offer of proof, the four contacted Gillock in early 1972. Two weeks later, Gillock advised them that he could get legislation enacted by the General Assembly which would provide for reciprocity in licensing. Under his proposal, a person who received a license in another county could be admitted without a test in Shelby County. The prosecution represented it would offer evidence that Gillock fixed a contingent fee of $5,000 per person, to be refunded if the legislation was not passed.\nThe Government also represented that it would offer evidence that Gillock introduced reciprocity legislation in the. senate and that he arranged for the introduction of a similar bill in the house. The Government further proposed to introduce statements made by Gillock on the floor of the senate in support of the bill. After the bill was passed by both branches of the legislature and forwarded to the Governor, several private persons, including union representatives, allegedly met with Gillock and voiced their opposition to the legislation. The Government intended to prove that Gillock replied that he could not financially afford to withdraw the legislation because he had already accepted “fees” for introducing it. Finally, the Government intended to prove that on April 13, 1972, Gillock moved to override the Governor’s veto of the legislation, and stated that it would introduce into evidence any and all statements made by Gillock on the floor of the senate in support of his motion to override.\nBased on this offer of proof, the District Court granted Gillock’s renewed motion to exclude evidence of his legislative acts under Rule 501. It ruled inadmissible Gillock’s official request for an opinion from the Attorney General regarding extradition and the answer to that request, and Gillock’s statements to Howard that he could exert pressure on the extradition hearing officer to block the extradition because the hearing officer had appeared before Gilloek’s legislative committee. Similarly, the court ruled that all evidence regarding Gillock’s introduction and support of the electricians’ reciprocal licensing bill, his conversation with the private individuals who opposed the legislation^ and the Governor’s veto letter would be inadmissible.\nThe Government again appealed the District. Court’s suppression order. The Court of Appeals by a divided vote held that “the long history and the felt need for protection of legislative speech or debate and the repeated and strong recognition of that history in the cases . . . from the Supreme Court, fully justify our affirming [the District Court] in [its] protection of the privilege in this case.” 587 F. 2d 284, 290 (1978). Turning to the scope of the privilege, the court affirmed the suppression of evidence of Gillock’s request for a formal opinion from the Attorney General, his participation in' the senate judiciary committee, his introduction of the reciprocity legislation, his motion on the floor of the senate to override the Governor’s veto, and all the statements he made on the floor of the senate. The other items of evidence were considered to be insufficiently related to the legislative process to be protected by the privilege.\nII\nGilloek urges that we construct an evidentiary privilege barring the introduction of evidence of legislative acts in federal criminal prosecutions against state legislators. He argues first that a speech or debate type privilege for state legislators in federal criminal cases is an established part of the federal common law and is therefore applicable through Rule 501. Second, he contends that even apart from Rule 501, a legislative speech or debate privilege is compelled by principles of federalism rooted in our constitutional structure.\nIt is clear that were we to recognize an evidentiary privilege similar in scope to the Federal Speech or Debate Clause, much of the evidence at issue here would be inadmissible. Recently, in United States v. Helstoski, 442 U. S. 477, 489 (1979), we reaffirmed our holding in United States v. Brewster, 408 U. S. 501, 525 (1972), that with respect to Members of Congress “[t]he Clause protects 'against inquiry into acts that occur in the regular course of the legislative process and into the motivation for those acts.’ ” Under that standard, evidence of Gillock’s participation in the state senate committee hearings and his votes and speeches on the floor would be privileged and hence inadmissible.\nThe language and legislative history of Rule 501 give no aid to Gillock. The Rule provides in relevant part that \"the privilege of a witness . . . shall be governed by the principles of the common law as they may be interpreted by the courts of the United States in the light of reason and experience.” Congress substituted the present language of Rule 501 for the draft proposed by the Advisory Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States to provide the courts with greater flexibility in developing rules of privilege on a case-by-case basis. Under the Judicial Conference proposed rules submitted to Congress, federal courts would have been permitted to apply only nine specifically enumerated privileges, except as otherwise required by the Constitution or provided by Acts of Congress. See Proposed Federal Rules of Evidence 501-513, H. R. Doc. No. 93-46, pp. 9-19 (1973). Neither the Advisory Committee, the Judicial Conference, nor this Court saw fit, however, to provide the privilege sought by Gillock. Although that fact standing alone would not compel the federal courts to refuse to recognize a privilege omitted from the proposal, it does suggest that the claimed privilege was not thought to be either indelibly ensconced in our common law or an imperative of federalism.\nMoreover, the House Conference Committee Report on the Federal Rules of Evidence leaves little doubt that Rule 501 requires the application of federal privilege law in criminal cases brought in federal court. H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 93-1597, p. 7 (1974). Cf. Wolfle v. United States, 291 U. S. 7, 13 (1934) (the admissibility of evidence in criminal trials in the federal courts “is to be controlled by common law principles, not by local statute”); Funk v. United States, 290 U. S. 371 (1933). Thus, the fact that there is an evidentiary privilege under the Tennessee Constitution, Art. II, § 13, which Gillock could assert in a criminal prosecution in state court does not compel an analogous privilege in a federal prosecution.\nIll\nGillock argues that the historical antecedents and policy considerations which inspired the Speech or Debate Clause of the Federal Constitution should lead this Court to recognize a comparable evidentiary privilege for state legislators in federal prosecutions. The important history of the Speech or Debate Clause has been related abundantly in opinions of this Court and need not be repeated. See, e. g., United States v. Helstoski, supra; United States v. Brewster, supra; United States v. Johnson, 383 U. S. 169 (1966). Suffice it to recall that England’s experience with monarchs exerting pressure on members of Parliament by using judicial process to make them more responsive to their wishes led the authors of our Constitution to write an explicit legislative privilege into our organic law. In statutes subject to repeal or in judge-made rules of evidence readily changed by Congress or the judges who made them, the protection would be far less than the legislative privilege created by the Federal Constitution.\nOur cases, however, have made clear that “[ajlthough the Speech or Debate Clause’s historic roots are in English history, it must be interpreted in light of the American experience, and in the context of the American constitutional scheme of government rather than the English parliamentary system.” United States v. Brewster, 408 U. S., at 508. In deciding whether the principles underlying the federal constitutional speech or debate privilege compel a similar evidentiary privilege on behalf of state legislators, the analysis must look primarily to the American experience, including our structure of federalism which had no counterpart in England.\nTwo interrelated rationales underlie the Speech or Debate Clause: first, the need to avoid intrusion by the Executive or Judiciary into the affairs of a coequal branch, and second, the desire to protect legislative independence. Eastland v. United States Servicemen’s Fund, 421 U. S. 491, 502-503 (1975). Cases considering the Speech or Debate Clause have frequently arisen in the context of a federal criminal prosecution of a Member of Congress and have therefore accented the first rationale. Only recently in such a case, we re-emphasized that a central purpose of the Clause is “to preserve the constitutional structure of separate, coequal, and independent branches of government. The English and American history of the privilege suggests that any lesser standard would risk intrusion by the Executive and the Judiciary into the sphere of protected legislative activities.” United States v. Helstoski, 442 U. S., at 491. Accord, United States v. Johnson, supra, at 180-181. The Framers viewed the speech or debate privilege as fundamental to the system of checks and balances. 8 The Works of Thomas Jefferson 322 (Ford ed. 1904); I The Works of James Wilson 421 (R. McCloskey ed. 1967).\nThe first rationale, resting solely on the separation of powers doctrine, gives no support to the grant of a privilege to state legislators in federal criminal prosecutions. It requires no citation of authorities for the proposition that the Federal Government has limited powers with respect to the states, unlike the unfettered authority which English monarchs exercised over the Parliament. By the same token, however, in those areas where the Constitution grants the Federal Government the power to act, the Supremacy Clause dictates that federal enactments will prevail over competing state exercises of power. Thus, under our federal structure, we do not have the struggles for power between the federal and state systems such as inspired the need for the Speech or Debate Clause as a restraint on the Federal Executive to protect federal legislators.\nApart from the separation of powers doctrine, it is also suggested that principles of comity require the extension of a speech or debate type privilege to state legislators in. federal criminal prosecutions. However, as we have noted, federal interference in the state legislative process is not on the same constitutional footing with the interference of one branch of the Federal Government in the affairs of a coequal branch. Baker v. Carr, 369 U. S. 186, 210 (1962). Cf. Dombrowski v. Pfister, 380 U. S. 479, 489-492 (1965) (federal court may enjoin state-court application of a clearly unconstitutional statute). Our opinion in National League of Cities v. Usery, 426 U. S. 833 (1976), is not to the contrary. There, we held that a federal statute regulating the wages of state employees was unconstitutional because it “operate [d] to directly displace the States’ freedom to structure integral operations in areas of traditional governmental functions.” Id., at 852.\nThe absence of a judicially created evidentiary privilege for state legislators is not, however, comparable intervention by the Federal Government into essential state functions. First, Gillock’s argument, resting on the Tenth Amendment, has no special force with regard to state legislators; on the rationale advanced, state executive officers and members of the state judiciary would have equally plausible claims that the denial of an evidentiary privilege to them resulted in a direct federal impact on traditional state governmental functions. Moreover, we recognized in National League of Cities that the regulation by Congress under the Commerce Clause of individuals is quite different from. legislation which directly regulates the internal functions of states. Id., at 840-841. Although the lack of an evidentiary privilege for a state legislator might conceivably influence his conduct while in the legislature, it is not in. any sense analogous to the direct regulation imposed by the federal, wage-fixing legislation in National League of Cities.\nThe second rationale underlying the Speech or Debate Clause is the need to insure legislative independence. Gillock relies heavily on Tenney v. Brandhove, 341 U. S. 367 (1951), where this Court was cognizant of the potential for disruption of the state legislative process. The issue there, however, was whether state legislators were immune from civil suits for alleged violations of civil rights under 42 U. S. C. § 1983. The claim was made by a private individual who alleged that a state legislative committee hearing was conducted to prevent him from exercising his First Amendment rights. The Court surveyed the history of the speech or debate privilege from its roots in the British parliamentary experience through its adoption in our own Federal Constitution. In light of these “presuppositions of our political history,” 341 U. S., at 372, the Court stated:\n“We cannot believe that Congress — itself a staunch advocate of legislative freedom — would impinge on a tradition so well grounded in history and reason by covert inclusion in the general language [of § 1983] before us.” Id., at 376.\nAccordingly, the Court held that a state legislator’s common-law absolute immunity from civil suit survived the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1871.\nAlthough Tenney reflects this Court’s sensitivity to interference with the functioning of state legislators, we do not read that opinion as broadly as Gillock would have us. First, Tenney was a civil action brought by a private plaintiff to vindicate private rights. Moreover, the cases in this Court which have recognized an immunity from civil suit for state officials have presumed the existence of federal criminal liability as a restraining factor on the conduct of state officials. As recently as O’Shea v. Littleton, 414 U. S. 488 (1974), we stated:\n“Whatever may be the case with respect to civil liability generally, ... or civil liability for willful corruption-, . . . we have never held that the performance of the duties of judicial, legislative, or executive officers, requires or contemplates the immunization of otherwise criminal deprivations of constitutional rights. ... On the contrary, the judicially fashioned doctrine of official immunity does not reach ‘so far as to immunize criminal conduct proscribed by an Act of Congress. . . Gravel v. United States, 408 U. S. 606, 627 (1972).” Id., at 503 (emphasis supplied).\nAccord, Imbler v. Pachtman, 424 U. S. 409, 429 (1976); Scheuer v. Rhodes, 416 U. S. 232 (1974). Thus, in protecting the independence of state legislators, Tenney and subsequent cases on official immunity have drawn the line at civil actions.\nWe conclude, therefore, that although principles of comity command careful consideration, our cases disclose that where important federal interests are at stake, as in the enforcement of féderal criminal statutes, comity yields. We recognize that denial of a privilege to a state legislator may have some minimal impact on the exercise of his legislative function; however, similar arguments made to support a claim of Executive privilege were found wanting in United States v. Nixon, 418 U. S. 683 (1974), when balanced against the need of enforcing federal criminal statutes. There, the genuine risk of inhibiting candor in the internal exchanges at the highest levels of the Executive Branch was held insufficient to justify denying judicial power to secure all relevant evidence in a criminal proceeding. See also United States v. Burr, 25 F. Cas. 187 (No. 14,694) (CC Va. 1807). Here, we believe that recognition of an evidentiary privilege for state legislators for their legislative acts would impair the legitimate interest of the Federal Government in enforcing its criminal statutes with only speculative benefit to the state legislative process.\nIV\nThe Federal Speech or Debate Clause, of course, is a limitation on the Federal Executive, but by its terms is confined to federal legislators. The Tennessee Speech or Debate Clause is in terms a limit only on the prosecutorial powers of that State. Congress might have provided that a state legislator prosecuted under federal law should be accorded the same evi-dentiary privileges as a Member of Congress. Alternatively, Congress could have imported the “spirit” of Erie R. Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U. S. 64 (1938), into federal criminal law and directed federal courts to apply to a state legislator the same evidentiary privileges available in a prosecution of a similar charge in the courts of the state. But Congress has chosen neither of these courses.\nIn the absence of a constitutional limitation on the power of Congress to make state officials, like all other persons, subject to federal criminal sanctions, we discern no basis in these circumstances for a judicially created limitation that handicaps proof of the relevant facts. Accordingly, the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is\nReversed.\nCompare United States v. DiCarlo, 565 F. 2d 802 (CA1 1977), cert. denied, 435 U. S. 924 (1978), and United States v. Craig, 537 F. 2d 957 (CA7) (en banc), cert. denied, 429 U. S. 999 (1976), with In re Grand Jury Proceedings, 563 F. 2d 577 (CA3 1977).\nThe count based on 18 U. S. C. § 1952 was subsequently dismissed by the District Court.\nThe Government stated that the offer was made on the assumption that the District Court’s prior ruling was correct. The Government, however, explicitly reserved its position that state legislators in federal criminal prosecutions are not entitled to an evidentiary privilege comparable to the Speech or Debate Clause.\nGillock would be entitled to request an opinion from the State Attorney General by virtue of his status as a state senator. Only state government officials, not private attorneys, can secure official opinions. Tenn. Code Ann. §8-609 (b)(6) (Supp. 1979).\nGilloek makes no claim that state legislators are entitled to the benefits of the Federal Speech or Debate Clause, which by its terms applies only to “Senators and Representatives.” See Lake Country Estates, Inc. v. Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, 440 U. S. 391, 404 (1979).\nRule 501 provides in full:\n“Except as otherwise required by the Constitution of the United States as provided by Act of Congress or in rules prescribed by the Supreme Court pursuant to statutory authority, the privilege of a witness, person, government, State, or political subdivision thereof shall be governed by the principles of the common law as they may be interpreted by the courts of the United States in the light of reason and experience. However, in civil actions and proceedings, with respect to an element of a claim or defense as to which State law supplies the rule of decision, the privilege of a witness, person, government, State, or political subdivision thereof shall be determined in accordance with State law.”\nWe also find it significant that we have not been cited to a single instance in the legislative history of Rule 501 where any Member of Congress manifested interest in providing an evidentiary privilege for state legislators charged in federal court with a violation of a federal criminal statute.\nThis is not to suggest that the privilege law as developed in the states is irrelevant. This Court has taken note of state privilege laws in determining whether to retain them in the federal system. See, e. g., Trammel v. United States, ante, p. 40 (rejection of the antimarital facts privilege).\nCompare Powell v. McCormack, 395 U. S. 486 (1969) (suit for injunction against individual Members of Congress to require the seating of Representative Adam Clayton Powell barred by the Speech or Debate Clause), with Bond v. Floyd, 385 U. S. 116 (1966) (individual state legislators enjoined from depriving Julian Bond of his seat, in the Georgia Legislature).\nDespite the frequent invocation of the-federal Speech or Debate Clause in Tenney, the Court has made clear that the holding was grounded on its interpretation of federal common law, not on the Speech or Debate Clause. See Lake Country Estates, Inc. v. Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, 440 U. S., at 404.\nFederal prosecutions of state and local officials, including state legislators, using evidence of their official acts are not infrequent. See, e. g., United States v. Rabbitt, 583 F. 2d 1014 (CA8 1978), cert. denied, 439 U. S. 1116 (1979); United States v. Mazzei, 521 F. 2d 639 (CA3), cert. denied, 423 U. S. 1014 (1975); United States v. Homer, 411 F. Supp. 972 (WD Pa. 1976). See also Anderson v. United States, 417 U. S. 211, 214-215 (1974). Of course, even a Member of Congress would not be immune under the federal Speech or Debate Clause from prosecution for the acts which form the basis of the Hobbs Act, 18 U. S. C. § 1951, and RICO, 18 U. S. C. § 1962, charges here. See United States v. Helstoski, 442 U. S. 477 (1979).\nCf. Gravel v. United States, 408 U. S. 606, 627 (1972) (“[W]e cannot carry a judicially fashioned privilege so far as to immunize criminal conduct proscribed by an Act of Congress or to frustrate the grand jury’s inquiry into whether publication of these classified documents violated a federal criminal statute”).\n\nQuestion: What is the issue area of the decision?\nA. Criminal Procedure\nB. Civil Rights\nC. First Amendment\nD. Due Process\nE. Privacy\nF. Attorneys\nG. Unions\nH. Economic Activity\nI. Judicial Power\nJ. Federalism\nK. Interstate Relations\nL. Federal Taxation\nM. Miscellaneous\nN. Private Action\nAnswer:", "role": "user" }, { "content": " I", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: \"Criminal Procedure\" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. \"Civil rights\" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. \"First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. \"Due process\" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. \"Privacy\" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. \"Attorneys\" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. \"Unions\" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. \"Economic activity\" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. \"Judicial power\" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. \"Federalism\" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. \"Federal taxation\" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. \"Private law\" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use \"Miscellaneous\" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.\n\nMr. Justice Harlan\ndelivered the opinion of the Court.\nThis case calls in question the propriety of a dismissal before trial of the first cause of action in a seaman’s diversity complaint. Dismissal was on the ground that the allegations of the complaint are deficient by reason of the New York Statute of Frauds.\nThe allegations of the complaint, which for present purposes ■ must be taken as true, are in substance as follows: Petitioner, while employed as chief steward on one of the vessels of respondent, United Fruit Company, suffered a thyroid ailment, not attributable to any fault of the respondent, but with respect to which it concededly had a legal duty to provide him with maintenance and cure. (The Osceola, 189 U. S. 158.) Respondent insisted that petitioner undergo treatment at a United States Public Health Service Hospital. Petitioner, however, considering on the basis of past experience that such treatment would prove unsatisfactory and inadequate, notified respondent that he wished to be treated by a private physician who had agreed to take care of him for. $350, which amount petitioner insisted would be payable by the respondent in fulfillment of its obligation for maintenance and cure.\nRespondent, the complaint continues, declined to accede to this course, but agreed that if petitioner would enter a Public Health Service Hospital (where he would receive free care) it would assume responsibility for all consequences of improper or inadequate treatment. Relying on that undertaking, and being unable himself to defray the cost of private treatment, petitioner underwent treatment at a Public Health Service Hospital. The Public Health Service Hospital and private physician alluded to were both located in New York.\nFinally, it is alleged that by reason of the improper treatment received at such hospital, petitioner suffered grievous unwonted bodily injury, for which the respondent, because of its undertaking, is liable to the petitioner for damages in the amount of 1250,00o.\nThe District Court dismissed the complaint, considering that the agreement sued on was void under the New York Statute of Frauds, N. Y. Personal Property Law, § 31, par. 2, there being no allegation that such agreement was evidenced by any writing, 166 F. Supp. 571. The Court of Appeals affirmed. 275 F. 2d 500. We brought the case here because it presented novel questions as to the interplay of state and maritime law. 363 U. S. 838.\nAt the outset, we think it clear that the lower courts were correct in regarding the sufficiency of this complaint as depending entirely upon its averments respecting respondent’s alleged agreement with petitioner. Liability here certainly cannot be founded on principles of respon-deat superior. Nor is there anything in the authorities relating to a shipowner’s duty to provide maintenance and cure which suggests that respondent was obliged, as a matter of law, to honor petitioner’s preference for private treatment, or that it was responsible for the quality of petitioner’s treatment at other hands which, for all that appears, may reasonably have been assumed to be well trained and careful.\nWith respect to respondent’s alleged agreed undertaking, as the case comes to us, petitioner, on the one hand, does not deny the contract’s invalidity under the New York Statute of Frauds, if state law controls, nor, on the other hand, can its validity well be doubted, though the alleged agreement was not reduced to writing, if maritime law controls. For it is an established rule of ancient respectability that oral contracts are generally regarded as valid by maritime law. In this posture of things two questions must be decided: First, was this alleged contract a maritime one? Second, if so, was it nevertheless of such a “local” nature that its validity should be judged by state law?\nI.\nThe boundaries of admiralty jurisdiction over contracts — as opposed to torts or crimes — being conceptual rather than spatial, have always been difficult to draw. Precedent and usage are helpful insofar as they exclude or include certain common types of contract: a contract to repair, Endner v. Greco, 3 F. 411, or to insure a ship, Insurance Co. v. Dunham, 11 Wall. 1, is maritime, but a contract to build a ship is not. People’s Ferry Co. v. Beers, 20 How. 393. Without doubt a contract for hire either of a ship or of the sailors and officers to man her is within the admiralty jurisdiction. 1 Benedict, Admiralty, 366. A suit on a bond covering cargo on general average is governed by admiralty law, Cie Francaise de Navigation v. Bonnasse, 19 F. 2d 777, while an agreement to pay damages for another’s breach of a maritime charter is not, Pacific Surety Co. v. Leatham & Smith T. & W. Co., 151 F. 440. The closest analogy we have found to the case at hand is a contract for hospital services rendered an injured seaman in satisfaction of a shipowner’s liability for maintenance and cure, which has been held to be a maritime contract. Methodist Episcopal Hospital v. Pacific Transport Co., 3 F. 2d 508. The principle by reference to which the cases are supposed to fall on one side of the line or the other is an exceedingly broad one. “The only question is whether the transaction relates to ships and vessels, masters and mariners, as the agents of commerce . . . I Benedict, Admiralty, 131.\nThe Court of Appeals here held:\n“The contract sued on is not a maritime contract, since it was merely a promise to pay money, on land, if the former seaman should suffer injury at the hands of the United States Public Health Service personnel, on land, in the course df medical treatment. . . . For all that appears in the complaint, it may well be that the contract sued on was allegedly made after the maritime contract of employment of the plaintiff had been terminated. It really makes no difference whether this was so or not. All that remained was the performance by the shipowner of its undisputed obligation to supply maintenance and cure. The shipowner supplied plaintiff with a master’s certificate, which was used by him to obtain admittance as a patient in the United States Public Health Service Hospital. . . . That took care of the obligation to furnish ‘cure.’. . .”\nWith respect to the learned judges below, we think that is too narrow a view of the matter. It can as well be argued that the alleged contract related to and stood in place of a duty created by and known only in admiralty as a kind of fringe benefit to the maritime contract of hire. See Cortes v. Baltimore Insular Line, 287 U. S. 367. The Court of Appeals and respondent are certainly correct in considering that a shipowner's duty to provide maintenance and cure may ordinarily be discharged by the issuing of a master’s certificate carrying admittance to a public hospital, and that a seaman who refuses such a certificate or the free treatment to which it entitles him without just cause, cannot further hold the shipowner to his duty to provide maintenance and cure. Williams v. United States, 133 F. Supp. 319; Luth v. Palmer Shipping Co., 210 F. 2d 224; The Bouker No. 2, 241 F. 831; see Calmar S. S. Corp. v. Taylor, 303 U. S. 525. But without countenancing petitioner’s intemperate aspersions against Public Health Service Hospitals, and rejecting as we have the noncontractual grounds upon which he seeks to predicate liability here, we nevertheless are clear that the duty to afford maintenance and cure is not simply and as a matter of law an obligation to provide for entrance to a public hospital. The cases which respondent cites hold no more than that a seaman who can receive adequate and proper care free of charge at a public hospital may not “deliberately refuse the hospital privilege, and then assert a lien upon his vessel for the increased expense which his. whim or taste has created.” The Bouker No. 2, supra, at 835. Presumably if a seaman refuses to enter a public hospital or, having entered, if he leaves to undergo treatment elsewhere, he may recover the cost of such other treatment upon proof that “proper and adequate” cure was not available at such hospital. Cf. Williams v. United States, Luth v. Palmer Shipping Co., supra.\nNo matter how skeptical one may be that such a burden of proof could be sustained, or that an indigent seaman would be likely to risk losing his rights to free treatment on the chance of sustaining that burden, since we should not exclude that possibility as a matter of law as the Court of Appeals apparently did, it must follow that the contract here alleged should be regarded as an agreement on the part of petitioner to forego a course of treatment which might have involved respondent in some additional expense, in return for respondent’s promise to make petitioner whole for any consequences of what appeared to it at the time as the cheaper alternative. In other words, the consideration for respondent’s alleged promise was petitioner’s good faith forbearance to press what he considered — perhaps erroneously — to be the full extent of his maritime right to maintenance and cure. Compare, American Law Institute, Restatement, Contracts §§ 75, 76. So viewed, we think that the alleged agreement was sufficiently related to peculiarly maritime concerns as not to put it, without more, beyond the pale of admiralty law.\nThis brings us, then, to the remaining, and what we believe is the controlling, question: whether the alleged contract, though maritime, is “maritime and local,” Western Fuel Co. v. Garcia, 257 U. S. 233, 242, in the sense that the application of state law would not disturb the uniformity of maritime law, Southern Pacific Co. v. Jensen, 244 U. S. 205.\nM 1 — 1\nAlthough the doctrines of the uniformity and supremacy of the maritime law have been vigorously criticized— see Southern Pacific Co. v. Jensen, supra, at 218 (dissenting opinion); Standard Dredging Co. v. Murphy, 319 U. S. 306, 309 — the qualifications and exceptions which this Court has built up to that imperative doctrine have not been considered notably more adequate. See Gilmore and Black, Admiralty, passim; Currie, Federalism and the Admiralty: “The Devil’s Own Mess,” 1960, The Supreme Court Review, 158; The Application of State Survival Statutes in Maritime Causes, 60 Col. L. Rev. 534. Perhaps the most often heard criticism of the supremacy doctrine is this: the fact that maritime law is — in a special sense at least, Romero v. International Terminal Co., 358 U. S. 354 — federal law and therefore supreme by-virtue of Article VI of the Constitution, carries with it the implication that wherever a maritime interest is involved, no matter how slight or marginal, it must displace a local interest, no matter how pressing and significant. But the process is surely rather one of accommodation, entirely familiar in many areas of overlapping state and federal concern, or a process somewhat analogous to the normal conflict of laws situation where two sovereignties assert divergent interests in a transaction as to which both have some concern. Surely the claim of federal supremacy is adequately served by the availability of a federal forum in the first instance and of review in this Court to provide assurance that the federal interest is correctly assessed and accorded due weight.\nThus, for instance, it blinks at reality to assert that because a longshoreman, living ashore and employed ashore by shoreside employers, performs seaman’s work, the State with these contacts must lose all concern for the longshoreman’s status and well-being. In allowing state wrongful death statutes, The Tungus v. Skovgaard, 358 U. S. 588; The Hamilton, 207 U. S. 398, and state survival of actions statutes, Just v. Chambers, 312 U. S. 383, respectively, to grant and to preserve a cause of action based ultimately on a wrong committed within, the admiralty jurisdiction and defined by admiralty law, this Court has attempted an accommodation between a liability dependent primarily upon the breach of a maritime duty and state rules governing the extent of recovery for such breach. Since the chance of death foreclosing recovery is necessarily a fortuitous matter, and since the recovery afforded the disabled victim of an accident need be no less than that afforded to his family should he die, the intrusion of these state remedial systems need not bring with it any undesirable disuniformity in the scheme of maritime law.\nAltogether analogous reasoning was used by Mr. Justice Brandéis in Red Cross Line v. Atlantic Fruit Co., 264 U. S. 109, where it was held that a New York court could properly compel arbitration under the arbitration clause of a maritime contract. It was there reasoned that since such clauses are valid in admiralty and their breach gives rise to an action for damages, to compel arbitration is really to do no more than substitute a different and more effective remedy for that available in admiralty.\nThe line of cases descended from the early precedent of Cooley v. Board of Wardens, 12 How. 299, and most recently added to by Huron Portland Cement v. Detroit, 362 U. S. 440; see also Kelly v. Washington, 302 U. S. 1, exemplify but another variation of this process of accommodation. In the Huron case we allowed the City of Detroit to impose the requirements of its smoke control regulations on vessels coming to the city, even though they had measured up to federally imposed standards as to ship’s boilers and equipment. There the matter was put thus:\n“. . . The thrust of the federal inspection laws [with which petitioner had complied] is clearly limited to affording protection from the perils of maritime navigation. . . .\n“By contrast, the sole aim of the Detroit ordinance is the elimination of air pollution to protect the health and enhance the cleanliness of the local community. . . .\n“Congressional recognition that the problem of air pollution is peculiarly a matter of state and local concern is manifest in . . . legislation.” 362 U. S., at 445-446.\nTurning to the present case, we think that several considerations point to an accommodation favoring the application of maritime law. It must be remembered that we are dealing here with a contract, and therefore with obligations, by hypothesis, voluntarily undertaken, and not, as in the case of tort liability or public regulations, obligations imposed simply by virtue of the authority of the State or Federal Government. This fact in itself creates some presumption in favor of applying that law tending toward the validation of the alleged contract. Pritchard v. Norton, 106 U. S. 124; Ehrenzweig, Contracts in the Conflict of Laws, Part One: Validity, 59 Col. L. Rev. 973. As we have already said, it is difficult to deny the essentially maritime character of this contract without either indulging in fine-spun distinctions in terms of what the transaction was really about, or simply denying the alleged agreement that characterization by reason of its novelty. Considering that sailors of any nationality may join a ship in any port, and that it is the clear duty of the ship to put into the first available port if this be necessary to provide prompt and adequate maintenance and cure to a seaman who falls ill during the voyage, The Iroquois, 194 U. S. 240, it seems to us that this is such a contract as may well have been made anywhere in the world, and that the validity of it should be judged by one law wherever it was made. On the other hand we are hard put to perceive how this contract was “peculiarly a matter of state and local concern,” Huron Portland Cement v. Detroit, supra, unless it be New York’s interest in not lending her courts to the accomplishment of fraud, something which appears to us insufficient to overcome the countervailing considerations.' Finally, since the effect of the application of New York law here would be to invalidate the contract, this case can hardly be analogized to cases such as Red Cross Line v. Atlantic Fruit, or Just v. Chambers, supra, where state law had the effect of supplementing the remedies available in admiralty for the vindication of maritime rights. Nor is Wilburn Boat Co. v. Fireman’s Ins. Co., 348 U. S. 310, apposite. The application of state law in that case was justified by the Court on the basis of a lack of any provision of maritime law governing the matter there presented. A concurring opinion, id., at 321, and some commentators have preferred to refer the decision to the absurdity of applying maritime law to a contract of insurance on a houseboat established in the waters of a small artificial lake between Texas and Oklahoma. See Gilmore and Black, Admiralty 44-45. Needless to say the situation presented here has a more genuinely salty flavor than that.\nIn sum, were contracts of the kind alleged in this complaint known to be a normal phenomenon in maritime affairs, we think that there would be little room for argument in favor of allowing local law to control their validity. A different conclusion should not be reached either because such a contract may be thought to be a rarity, or because of any suspicion that this complaint may have been contrived to serve ulterior purposes. Cf. 275 F. 2d, at 501; 166 F. Supp., at 573-574, note 1, supra. Without remotely intimating any view upon the merits of petitioner’s claim, we conclude that it was error to apply the New York Statute of Frauds to bar proof of the agreement alleged in the complaint.\nReversed.\nApparently any cause of action against the United States arising out of the alleged negligence of its agents in treating petitioner was barred by the running of a shorter statute of limitations than is applicable to the contract alleged .here. Compare 28 U. S. C. § 2401 (b) with New York Civil Practice Act, § 48.\nNew York Personal Property Law, § 31, par. 2, provides:\n“Every agreement, promise or undertaking is void, unless it or some note or memorandum thereof be in writing, and subscribed by the person to be charged therewith, or by his lawful agent, if such agreement, promise or undertaking;\n“2. Is a special promise to answer for the debt, default or miscarriage of another person.”\nA second cause of action for maintenance and cure was subsequently discontinued by petitioner, 275 F. 2d, at 502.\nAlthough the question has not often been litigated, Union Fish Co. v. Erickson, 248 U. S. 308; see United States Fidelity & Guaranty Co. v. American-Hawaiian S. S. Co., 280 F. 1023; Hastorf v. Long-W. G. Broadhurst Co., 239 F. 852; Quirk v. Clinton, 20 Fed. Cas. No. 11,518; Northern Star S. S. Co. v. Kansas Milling Co., 75 F. Supp. 534, it is well accepted that maritime contracts do not as a generality depend on writing for their validity. As Judge Hough, one of the most distinguished of the federal admiralty judges, once said:\n“. . . [This] failure to stress force of custom, in maritime matters, is found in Union Fish Co. v. Erickson [supra], where with obvious correctness the California statute of frauds was not permitted to defeat a shipmaster’s libel for wrongful discharge from an engagement for more than one year. . . . [T]he ground of decision should have been the simple one that such engagements, orally made, were as old as the history of marine customs, had passed into the maritime law of the United States, and would be recognized and enforced by the courts of the nation, — so that what California said on the subject (if anything) was merely immaterial.” Hough, Admiralty Jurisdiction— Of Late Years, 37 Harv. L. Rev. 529, at 537.\nWriting of a different sort of contract, an equally distinguished British admiralty judge has said that “. . . it is common practice for commercial men to assume very extensive financial obligations on the nod of a head or the initialing of a slip, and many binding chartering engagements are no doubt daily concluded in an informal manner..,.” Soc. Portuguesa de Navios Tanques, Ltd. v. Hualfslsk Polaris A/S, [1952] 1 Lloyd’s List Reports 73, 74 (per McNair, J.), in which opinion he is confirmed by Kent, 3 Commentaries 159-160 (1828 ed.), and the French authority, Pothier, Maritime Contracts 10 (Cushing trans.). True, a seaman’s contract of hire, his articles, have long been required to be in writing by statutes of the various maritime nations, among them one of the first • ^atutes passed by our Congress, 1 Stat. 131 (1790). Compare 2 Geo. II, c. 36 (1729). But this rule was clearly instituted for the protection of the seaman, Curtis, Merchant Seamen 37, and in no way assumes the invalidity of such contracts in the absence of writing. In our law the seaman who ships without articles can recover the highest wages paid at the port of embarcation, as well as subjecting the master who took him. on board to penalties, 46 U. S. C. §§564, 578; Norris, The Law of Seamen, §§ 91, 119. An Ordonnance of Louis XIV declares that if the seaman’s contract is not in writing, the seaman’s oath as to its provisions must be credited, Pothier, supra, at 100, while Lord Tenterden, Merchant Ships and Seamen 476, expressly states that an oral contract of hire is not invalid but only results in a penalty against the master. The Union Fish case, supra, no more than exemplifies the enforceability of an oral maritime contract of hire.\nBenedict goes on to quote from an anonymous commentary on the Mediaeval Statutes of Culm, one of the early sources of maritime law, that anything pertaining to navigation or seamen is to be considered a part of the maritime law.\n\nQuestion: What is the issue area of the decision?\nA. Criminal Procedure\nB. Civil Rights\nC. First Amendment\nD. Due Process\nE. Privacy\nF. Attorneys\nG. Unions\nH. Economic Activity\nI. Judicial Power\nJ. Federalism\nK. Interstate Relations\nL. Federal Taxation\nM. Miscellaneous\nN. Private Action\nAnswer:", "role": "user" }, { "content": " H", "role": "assistant" } ]

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