Estep v. United States/Concurrence Murphy

by Frank Murphy

United States Supreme Court

327 U.S. 114

ESTEP  v.  UNITED STATES. SMITH

 Argued: Nov. 7, 1945. --- Decided: Feb 4, 1946

Mr. Justice MURPHY, concurring.

To sustain the convictions of the two petitioners in these cases would require adherence to the proposition that a person may be criminally punished without ever being accorded the opportunity to prove that the prosecution is based upon an invalid administrative order. That is a proposition to which I cannot subscribe. It violates the most elementary and fundamental concepts of due process of law. It condemns a man without a full hearing and a consideration of all of his alleged defenses. To sanction such a proposition is to place in indelible 'blot upon our jurisprudence and civilization,' McVeigh v. United States, 11 Wall. 259, 267, 20 L.Ed. 80, which cannot be justified by any appeal to patriotism or wartime exigencies.

The two courts below condemned the petitioners to prison for failing to obey orders to report for induction into the armed services, which had previously found them physically fit. Petitioners do not deny that they disobeyed these orders. They do claim, however, that there was a singular lack of procedural due process in the issuance of the induction orders and that the orders were therefore invalid-claims that must be assumed to be true for purposes of the cases before us. But the courts below, relying upon Falbo v. United States, 320 U.S. 49, 64 S.Ct. 346, 88 L.Ed. 305, forbade them from raising such claims. Under that view, it is irrelevant that the petitioners had never had a prior opportunity and will never have a future chance to test these claims; it is likewise immaterial that the claims, if proved, might completely absolve them from liability. Thus the stigma and penalties of criminality attach to one who wilfully disobeys an induction order which may be constitutionally invalid, or unauthorized by statute or regulation, or issued by mistake, or issued solely as the result of bias and prejudice. The mere statement of such a result is enough to condemn it.

The reasons advanced for thus depriving the petitioners of their liberty without due process of law are unmeritorious.

First. It is said that Congress so designed the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 as to preclude courts from inquiring into the validity of an induction order during the course of a prosecution under § 11 for a wilful failure to obey such an order. But if that is true, the Act is unconstitutional in this respect. Before a person may be punished for violating an administrative order due process of law requires that the order be within the authority of the administrative agency and that it not be issued in such a way as to deprive the person of his constitutional rights. A court having jurisdiction to try such a case has a clear, inherent duty to inquire into these matters so that constitutional rights are not impaired or destroyed. Congress lacks any authority to negative this duty or to command a court to exercise criminal jurisdiction without regard to due process of law or other individual rights. To hold otherwise is to substitute illegal administrative discretion for constitutional safeguards. As this Court has previously said, 'Under our system there is no warrant for the view that the judicial power of a competent court can be circumscribed by any legislative arrangement designed to give effect to administrative action going beyond the limits of constitutional authority.' St. Joseph Stock Yards Co. v. United States, 298 U.S. 38, 52, 56 S.Ct. 720, 726, 80 L.Ed. 1033. This principle has been applied many times in the past for the benefit of corporations. Ohio Valley Water Co. v. Ben Avon Borough, 253 U.S. 287, 289, 40 S.Ct. 527, 528, 64 L.Ed. 908; Dayton-Goose Creek R. Co. v. United States, 263 U.S. 456, 486, 44 S.Ct. 169, 174, 68 L.Ed. 388, 33 A.L.R. 472; Panama Refining Co. v. Ryan, 293 U.S. 388, 432, 55 S.Ct. 241, 253, 79 L.Ed. 446; Prentis v. Atlantic Coast Line Co., 211 U.S. 210, 29 S.Ct. 67, 53 L.Ed. 150. I assume that an individual is entitled to no less respect.

But the Act need not be construed so as to reach this unconstitutional result. Nothing in the statute commands courts to shut their eyes to the Constitution or to deny a full and fair hearing when performing their functions under § 11 and we should be unwilling to imply such a prohibition. Once the judicial power is properly invoked under § 11, a court has unquestioned authority under the Constitution and the Judicial Code to accord a defendant due process of law and to inquire into alleged deprivations of constitutional rights despite the absence of any specific authority under the Act to that effect. A contrary result certainly is not dictated by the fact that the Act makes local board decisions 'final,' subject to the administrative appeal provisions. This merely determines the point of administrative finality, leaving to the courts the ultimate and historical duty of judging the validity of the 'final' administrative orders which they are called upon to enforce with criminal sanctions, at least where no other method of judicial review is previously available.

A construction of the Act so as to insure due process of law and the protection of constitutional liberties is not an amendment to the Act. It is simply a recognized use of the interpretative process to achieve a just and constitutional result, coupled with a re usal to ascribe to Congress an unstated intention to cause deprivations of due process.

Second. It is urged that the purpose and scheme of the legislative program necessitate the foreclosure of a full hearing in a criminal proceeding under § 11. The urgent need of mobilizing the manpower of the nation for emergency purposes and the dire consequences of delay in that process are emphasized. From this premise it is argued that no 'litigious interruption' in the selective process can be tolerated and that judicial inquiry into the validity of an induction order during the course of a criminal proceeding is a prime example of a 'litigious interruption.'

This argument, which was pressed so urgently and successfully in the Falbo case, conveniently ignores the realities of the situation. The selective process, in relation to the petitioners, was finally and completely interrupted at the time when they disobeyed the induction orders and subjected themselves to possible criminal liability. Any subsequent judicial review of the induction orders could have no possible effect upon the continuance of the selective process and could bear no earmarks of a 'litigious interruption.' Thus at the time of petitioners' trials the courts were confronted with accomplished interruptions rather than with a theory. A decision at that point to grant petitioners full hearings and to protect their constitutional rights would simply be a recognition of the fact that the Constitution protects the petitioners whenever their liberty is at stake, whatever may have been their motives in disobeying the orders.

It is alleged, of course, that to allow a full hearing in a criminal proceeding under this Act would be to extend an open invitation to all inductees to disobey their induction orders and litigate the validity of the orders in the subsequent trials. This is at best a poor excuse for stripping petitioners of their rights to due process of law. Moreover, the degree to which judicial review at this stage would encourage disobedience of induction orders lies in the realm of conjecture and cannot be demonstrated one way or the other by proof. But common sense would indicate that the number of those willing to undergo the risk of criminal punishment in order to test the validity of their induction orders, with the attendant difficulties of proof, would be extremely small. Adherence to due process of law in criminal trials is unlikely to impede the war effort unduly. And should perchance the opposite be true there are undoubtedly legislative means of combating the problem.

Third. The further suggestion is made that the only judicial review of induction orders available is by means of habeas corpus proceedings brought subsequent to induction and that this remedy satisfies whatever judicial review may be required by the Constitution. I fully concur in the desirability and necessity of such a proceeding for those who have been inducted and who wish to test the validity of their induction orders.

It should be noted in passing, however, that this remedy may be quite illusory in many instances. It requires one first to enter the armed forces and drop every vestige of civil rights. Military orders become the law of life and violations are met with summary court-martial procedure. No more drastic condition precedent to judicial review has ever been framed. Many persons with religious or conscientious scruples are unable to meet such a condition. But even if a person is inducted and a quest is made for a writ of habeas corpus, the outlook is often bleak. The proceeding must be brought in the jurisdiction in which the person is then detained by the military, which may be thousands of miles removed from his home, his friends, his counsel, his local board and the witnesses who can testify in his behalf. Should he overcome all these obstacles and possess enough money to proceed further, he still faces the possibility of being shifted by the military at a moment's notice into another jurisdiction, thus making the proceeding moot. There is little assurance, moreover, that the military will treat his efforts to obtain the writ with sympathetic understanding. These practical difficulties may thus destroy whatever efficacy the remedy might otherwise have and cast considerable doubt on the assumption that habeas corpus proceedings necessarily guarantee due process of law to inductees.

But the availability of judicial review through habeas corpus proceedings misses the issue in this case. Such a proceeding may or may not provide an adequate remedy for the person who has been inducted. We are dealing here, however, with two persons who have not been inducted and who never will be inducted by force of the orders under attack. The writ of habeas corpus following induction is thus a completely non-existent remedy so far as these petitioners are concerned. It neither adds to nor detracts from the reasons for granting judicial review in these criminal proceedings.

If, as I believe, judicial review of some sort and at some time is required by the Constitution, then when and where can these petitioners secure that review? They have not had a prior chance to obtain review of the induction orders; nor will they subsequently be accorded the opportunity to test their contentions in court. It is no answer that they should have pursued different courses of action and secured writs of habeas corpus after induction. Due process of law is not dispensed on the basis of what people might have or should have done. The sole issue here is whether due process of law is to be granted now or never. The choice seems obvious.

By denying judicial review in this criminal proceeding, the courts below in effect said to each petitioner: You have disobeyed an allegedly illegal order for which you must be punished without the benefit of the judicial review required by the Constitution, although if you had obeyed the order you would have had all the judicial review necessary. I am at a loss to appreciate the logic or justice of that position. It denies due process of law to one who is charged with a crime and grants it to one who is obedient. It closes the door of the Constitution to a person whose liberty is at stake and whose need for due process of law is most acute. In short, it condemns a man without a fair hearing.

There is something basically wrong and unjust about a juridical system that sanctions the imprisonment of a man without ever according him the opportunity to claim that the charge made against him is illegal. I am not yet willing to conclude that we have such a system in this nation. Every fiber of the Constitution and every legal principle of justice and fairness indicate otherwise. The reports are filled with decisions affirming the right to a fair and full hearing, the opportunity to present every possible defense to a criminal charge and the chance at some point to challenge an administrative order before punishment. Those rudimentary concepts are ingrained in our legal framework and stand ready for use whenever life or liberty is in peril. The need for their application in this instance seems beyond dispute.

We must be cognizant of the fact that we are dealing here with a legislative measure born of the cataclysm of war, which necessitates many temporary restrictions on personal liberty and freedom. But the war power is not a blank check to be used in blind disregard of all the individual rights which we have struggled so long to recognize and preserve. It must be used with discretion and with a sense of proportionate values. In this instance it seems highly improbable that the war effort necessitates the destruction of the right of a person charged with a crime to obtain a complete review and consideration of his defense. As long as courts are open and functioning judicial review is not expendable.

All of the mobilization and all of the war effort will have been in vain if, when all is finished, we discover that in the process we hav destroyed the very freedoms for which we fought. These cases represent a small but significant reflection of that fact. The reversal of the judgments below is therefore in line with the highest traditions of the Court.

Notes