Wiley Blount Rutledge

“ It may be doubted that the Amendment requires challenge to an opponent's case to be made without reference to the merits of one's own and at the price of all opportunity to have it considered. On the other hand, there is equal room for disbelieving it compels endless repetition of litigation and unlimited chance, by education gained at the opposing party's expense, for perfecting a case at other trials. ”

“ With few exceptions, tort liability does not depend upon legislation. If there is one function which I should think we would feel free to exercise under a Constitution which vests in us judicial power, it would be to apply well established common law principles to a case whose only novelty is in facts. The courts of England, whose scruples against legislating are at least as sensitive as ours normally are, have not hesitated to say that His Majesty's Treasury may recover outlay to cure a British soldier from injury by negligent wrongdoer and the wages he was meanwhile paid. ”

“ Perhaps we are too far removed from the experiences of the past to appreciate fully the consequences that may result from an irresponsible though well-meaning use of the subpoena power. To allow a non-judicial officer, unarmed with judicial process, to demand the books and papers of an individual is an open invitation to abuse of that power. It is no answer that the individual may refuse to produce the material demanded. Many persons have yielded solely because of the air of authority with which the demand is made, a demand that cannot be enforced without subsequent judicial aid. ”

“ No one may be required to obtain a license in order to speak. But once he uses the economic power which he has over other men and their jobs to influence their action, he is doing more than exercising the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment. That is true whether he be an employer or an employee. But as long as he does no more than speak he has the same unfettered right, no matter what side of an issue he espouses. ”

“ In my view an ordinance drawn so ambiguously and inconsistently as to reflect the differing views of its meaning taken by the two groups who compose the majority sustaining it, would violate Fourteenth Amendment due process even if no question of free speech were involved. No man should be subject to punishment under a statute when even a bare majority of judges upholding the conviction cannot agree upon what acts the statute denounces. ”

“ It is one not to be answered by such indecisive inquiries as whether the venue or jurisdictional statute is labeled a 'special' or a 'general' one. Nor is it to be determined merely by the court's view that applicability of the doctrine would serve the ends of justice in the particular case. It is rather to be decided, upon consideration of all the relevant materials, by whether the legislative purpose and the effect of the language used to achieve it were to vest the power of choice in the plaintiff or to confer power upon the courts to qualify his selection. ”

“ The courts cannot tolerate the expulsion of a member of a union, depriving him of his right to earn a living merely because he invokes the process of the courts to protect his rights-even if he does so mistakenly. The Labor Relations Act makes it an unfair labor practice by an employer 'To discharge or otherwise discriminate against an employee because he has filed charges or given testimony' in proceedings under it. ”

“ Of course, paying the cost of transportation promotes the general cause of education and the welfare of the individual. So does paying all other items of educational expense. And obviously, as the majority say, it is much too late to urge that legislation designed to facilitate the opportunities of children to secure a secular education serves no public purpose. Our nationwide system of public education rests on the contrary view, as do all grants in aid of education, public or private, which is not religious in character. ”

“ To compare an industry so completely interlocked in all its stages, by all-inclusive contract as well as by industrial structure and organization, with one like producing, processing, and marketing fruits, vegetables, corn, or other products, susceptible of various uses and under conditions affording varied outlets for market, both local and interstate, in the raw or refined state, in which neither such a contractual nor such industrial integration exists, is to ignore the facts of industrial life. ”

“ To determine what persons and commodities shall be taken abroad is to control what persons and commodities may become the subject of foreign commerce, and that is to control the lifeblood of the commerce itself. ”

“ As a matter of justice, I see no reason why taxpayers of the United States should relieve a wrongdoer of part of his normal liability for personal injury when the victim of negligence happens to be a soldier. And I cannot see why the principles of tort law that allow a husband or parent to recover do not logically sustain the right of the United States to recover in this case. ”

“ In our view, when the employer's negligence impairs or destroys an employee's health by requiring him to work under conditions likely to bring about such harmful consequences, the injury to the employee is just as great when it follows, often inevitably, from a carrier's negligent course pursued over an extended period of time as when it comes with the suddenness of lightning. Silicosis is as much 'injury,' leading in time as certainly to permanent disability, as scalding from a boiler's explosion. ”

“ I cannot agree that the commerce clause of the Federal Constitution has left interstate traffic vulnerable to such local permissions and burdens. Because the immediate impact of the tax is on a railroad, we should not delude ourselves as to its real effect. It is a tax on traffic-on the movement of goods-and its weight is shifted from the carrier to the consumer. There is, of course, a 'local incident,' a stoppage in transit, a reloading. 'Local incidents' of some sort can be identified in all interstate transportation. ”

“ And the fact that the zealous exercise of the right to propagandize the community may result in violent or disorderly situations difficult for children to face is no excuse for prohibiting the exercise of that right.
No chapter in human history has been so largely written in terms of persecution and intolerance as the one dealing with religious freedom. From ancient times to the present day, the ingenuity of man has known no limits in its ability to forge weapons of oppression for use againstrights of those those who dare to express or practice unorthodox religious beliefs. ”

“ It is immaterial that the same sentence might or probably would have been imposed in an exercise of the court's discretion. Petitioner was entitled to have sentence pronounced in that manner, not as an automatic mandate of statute. The denial of the very essence of the judicial process, which is the exercise of discretion where discretion is required, is in itself a denial of due process, not merely an error of state law of no concern to this Court. And we cannot speculate whether the same sentence would have been pronounced if the court's discretion had been exercised. ”

“ Before any man can be considered as a member of Civil Society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governor of the Universe. And if a member of Civil Society who enters into any subordinate Association must always do it with a reservation of his duty to the general authority, much more must every man who becomes a member of any particular Civil Society do it with a saving of his allegiance to the Universal Sovereign. We maintain, therefore, that, in matters of Religion, no man's right is abridged by the institution of Civil Society, and that Religion is wholly exempt from its cognizance. ”

“ We should be very reluctant to define for the Commission the occasions which appropriately demand investigation of general transportation problems, and more particularly when a contest over the rate on a particular commodity included in a network of tariffs calls for such a general investigation. Surely it is within the special competence of the Commission to put on a discriminating carrier the duty of justifying by proof his plain discrimination as to a particular rate and not permit him to compel the Commission by a mere assertion to embark upon a far-flung inquiry. ”

“ The liability of the vessel or owner for maintenance and cure, regardless of their negligence, was established long before our modern conception of contract. But it, like the liability to indemnify the seaman for injuries resulting from unseaworthiness, has been universally recognized as an obligation growing out of the status of the seaman and his peculiar relationship to the vessel, and as a feature of the maritime law compensating or off-setting the special hazards and disadvantages to which they who go down to sea in ships are subjected. ”

“ For it is enough to destroy the analogy the Government seeks to draw that the remedy by habeas corpus is an uncertain one. Should it be found unavailable and at the same time we should rule that petitioner's defense could not be made in the criminal proceeding, he would be left entirely without remedy, a result consistent neither with our decision in the cases of Estep and Smith, supra, nor with the statute. No more, we think, is it consistent with the Act or those rulings to foreclose the right of defense upon the basis of uncertainty whether the habeas corpus remedy might be had. ”

“ But by common experience this is more often the exception than the rule. Moreover, most often in close cases, where the proof leaves one in doubt, the evidence of general regard by one's fellows may be the weight which turns the scales of justice. It may indeed be sufficient to create a clear conviction of innocence or to sow that reasonable doubt which our law requires to be overcome in all criminal cases before the verdict of guilty can be returned. ”

“ The statute by which the Federal Government gives its own claims against an insolvent priority over claims in favor of a state government must be applied by courts, not because federal claims are more meritorious or equitable, but only because that Government has more power. But the priority statute is an assertion of federal supremacy as against any contrary state policy. It is not a limitation on the Federal Government itself, not an assertion that the priority policy shall prevail over all other federal policies. ”

“ Every act of legislation which secures their healths, increases their comforts, and administers to their infirmities, binds them more strongly to their country; and the parental law, which relieves them in sickness by fastening their interests to the ship, is as wise in policy, as it is just in obligation. Even the merchant himself derives an ultimate benefit from what may seem at first an onerous charge. It encourages seamen to engage in perilous voyages with more promptitude, and at lower wages. It diminishes the temptation to plunderage upon the approach of sickness ”

“ Each form of transportation presents, by reason of its peculiar operating conditions, its own problems for the function of rate making. And each, by virtue of competition with others, presents additional complications arising from the varied circumstances of their operation. Hence, in such situations, principles previously established for application within a single form of transportation cannot always be transplanted to control its relations with another or those of both with the public generally, without consequences unduly harmful to one or to the public interest. ”

“ If the context of history into which the Railway Labor Act must be placed for a proper interpretation reveals that Congress was bent on creating a system complete in itself for securing peaceful industrial relations in the railroad world, this Court should not import into that system traditional assumptions and rules derived from a scheme of judicially enforceable rights. ”

“ Payment of transportation is no more, nor is it any the less, essential to education, whether religious or secular, than payment for tuitions, for teachers' salaries, for buildings, equipment, and necessary materials. Nor is it any the less directly related, in a school giving religious instruction, to the primary religious objective all those essential items of cost are intended to achieve. No rational line can be drawn between payment for such larger, but not more necessary, items and payment for transportation. The only line that can be so drawn is one between more dollars and less. ”

“ Guilt in a criminal case must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt and by evidence confined to that which long experience in the common-law tradition, to some extent embodied in the Constitution, has crystallized into rules of evidence consistent with that standard. ”