Martin v. Creasy/Dissent Douglas

by William O. Douglas

United States Supreme Court

360 U.S. 219

Martin  v.  Creasy

 Argued: April 2, 1959. --- Decided: June 8, 1959

Mr. Justice DOUGLAS, dissenting in part.

We are all agreed that the District Court improperly enjoined the enforcement of the Pennsylvania statute. But I believe that these property owners are entitled to a declaratory judgment by the federal court, determining whether access to a highway is a property right, compensable under the Fifth Amendment (and made applicable to the States through the Fourteenth, Chicago, B. & Q.R. Co. v. City of Chicago, 166 U.S. 226, 17 S.Ct. 581, 41 L.Ed. 979).

Congress has granted the District Courts jurisdiction over cases arising 'under the Constitution,' 28 U.S.C. § 1331, 28 U.S.C.A. § 1331, as this one does. That jurisdiction need not be exercised where it would be obstructive of state action and lead to needless interference with state agencies. Alabama Public Service Comm. v. Southern R. Co., 341 U.S. 341, 71 S.Ct. 762, 95 L.Ed. 1002. It likewise need not be exercised where the resolution of state law questions-which are complex or unsettled-may make it unnecessary to reach a federal constitutional question. Spector Motor Service Co. v. McLaughlin, 323 U.S. 101, 65 S.Ct. 152, 89 L.Ed. 101; City of Chicago v. Fieldcrest Dairies, 316 U.S. 168, 62 S.Ct. 986, 86 L.Ed. 1355; American Federation of Labor v. Watson, 327 U.S. 582, 66 S.Ct. 761, 90 L.Ed. 873. And these principles are applicable in the main to declaratory judgment actions as well as to those where injunctions are sought. Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Co. v. Huffman, 319 U.S. 293, 63 S.Ct. 1070, 87 L.Ed. 1407.

In my view these cases are irrelevant here. We have at bottom in this case a question whether access to a highway is a property right which is compensable under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. If it is compensable, as the District Court ruled, see 160 F.Supp. 404, 410-412, this is the most appropriate time to make the announcement. Particularly is this so when appellees in this case sought a declaration by the state court of their rights under the statute and were told that 'their constitutional rights, whatever they may be, will be guarded and protected.' Such a ruling by the District Court would not halt the highway program. But it might have an effect on engineering designs for new local service roads to provide substitute means of access to the highways; and it would make clear to the local authorities what the scope of their financial commitments in the undertaking is.

A determination of appellees' property rights would not be a premature decision because of the inability to forecast how the State will effect its goal of limiting access to its highway. Whether or not the landowners will be left landlocked or given access to substitute service roads goes only to the question of the amount of property 'taken,' if any. It has nothing to do with the question of the landowner's property right in access to highway abutting his land.

We have witnessed in recent times a hostility to the exercise by federal courts of their power to declare what a citizen's rights are under local law in diversity cases (Louisiana Power & Light Co. v. City of Thibodaux, 360 U.S. 25, 79 S.Ct. 1070) and in cases where federal rights are invoked. Public Service Comm. of Utah v. Wycoff Co., 344 U.S. 237, 73 S.Ct. 236, 97 L.Ed. 291; Harrison v. NAACP, 360 U.S. 167, 79 S.Ct. 1025. I think the federal courts, created by the First Congress, are today a haven where rights can sometimes be adjudicated even more dispassionately than in state tribunals. At least Congress in its wisdom has provided since 1875 (18 Stat. 470) that the lower federal courts should be the guardian of federal rights. The judicial intolerance of diversity jurisdiction, noted by my Brother Brennan in his dissent in Louisiana Power & Light Co. v. City of Thibodaux, supra, seems to be spreading to other heads of federal jurisdiction as the decisions in this case and in Harrison v. NAACP, ^[1] supra, suggest. True it is, that the exercise of that power in some cases would be so utterly disruptive of state-federal relations as to make it undesirable. As a general rule, however, the federal courts should be responsible for the exposition of federal law. It should be their responsibility in cases properly before them under heads of jurisdiction prescribed by Congress to construe federal statutes and the Federal Constitution. There is no more appropriate occasion for the exercise of that jurisdiction than the present case which involves the question whether or not access rights constitute 'property' in the constitutional sense. ^[2] That question concerns not state law but a concept imbedded in the Bill of Rights. It is in no way entangled with local law. The Supremacy Clause of the Constitution makes all local projects bow to that concept of 'property.' And in my view there is no more appropriate tribunal for an adjudication of that issue than the Federal District Court, which in this case acted at the very threshold of this engineering project and made a ruling that informs the local authorities of the full reach of their responsibilities. This is not intermeddling in state affairs nor creating needless friction. It is an authoritative pronouncement at the beginning of a controversy which saves countless days in the slow, painful, and costly litigation of separate individual lawsuits in state viewers proceedings.

Notes

1. The Harrison case invoked federal jurisdiction not only under 28 U.S.C. § 1331 and § 1332, 28 U.S.C.A. §§ 1331, 1332 (diversity) but also under § 1343 (civil rights).
2. Title 28 U.S.C. § 2201, 28 U.S.C.A. § 2201, permits a federal court to declare a party's rights in the case of an actual controversy. There is such a controversy here. Appellants have expressed their intention to declare the highway on which appellees' properties abut to be a limited access highway, and have consistently argued that appellees have no right to compensation, although they may be denied access to the highway which they previously had. This is enough to create an actual controversy which a federal court may settle if its processes are, as here, properly invoked.