United States v. Spelar/Concurrence Jackson

by Robert H. Jackson

United States Supreme Court

338 U.S. 217

United States  v.  Spelar

 Argued: Oct. 18, 1949. --- Decided: Nov 7, 1949

Mr. Justice JACKSON, concurring.

I reach the same result; but I could hardly do so, as does the Court, by reiteration of the prevailing opinion in Vermilya-Brown Co. v. Connell, 335 U.S. 377, 69 S.Ct. 140. That decision, taken with the present one, adds up to this: If an employee should chance to work overtime on a leased air base, he can maintain an action for extra wages, penalties and interest, because the Court finds the air base to be a 'possession' of the United States. However, if he is injured at the same place, he may not proceed under the Tort Claims Act to recover, because the Court finds the air base then to be a 'foreign country.' To those uninitiated in modern methods of statutory construction it may seem a somewhat esoteric doctrine that the same place at the same time may legally be both a possession of the United States and a foreign country. This disparity results from holding that Congress, when it refers to our leased air bases, at one time calls them 'possessions' and at another 'foreign countries.' While congressional incoherence of thought or of speech is not unconstitutional and Congress can use a contrariety of terms to describe the same thing, we should pay Congress the respect of not assuming lightly that it indulges in inconsistencies of speech which make the English language almost meaningless. There is some reason to think the inconsistency lies in the Court's rendering of the statutes rather than in the way Congress has written them. At all events, the present decision seems to me correct, and, so far as it is contradicted by the effect of Vermilya-Brown, I think we should retreat from the latter.

Notes