Robert H. Jackson

“ This case would warrant little further discussion except for a persuasively presented argument that the National Labor Relations Board enforces only a public right on behalf of the public interest, while state equity powers are invoked by a private party to protect a private right. The public right, it is said, is so distinct and dissimilar from the private right that federal occupancy of one field does not debar a state from continuing to exercise its conventional equity powers over the other. ”

“ Indeed, Pennsylvania passed a statute the same year as its labor relations Act reciting abuses of the injunction in labor litigations attributable more to procedure and usage than to substantive rules. [7] Amultiplicity of tribunals and a diversity of procedures are quite as apt to produce incompatible or conflicting adjudications as are different rules of substantive law. The same reasoning which prohibits federal courts from intervening in such cases, except by way of review or on application of the federal Board, precludes state courts from doing so. ”

“ But we find no basis at all for petitioners' argument that the equity courts, which in Pennsylvania enforce the labor relations statute, would enforce rights of any different category, or of any less public or more private character, than those enforced by the National Labor Relations Board. ”

“ It is true that petitioners sought an injunction to restrain damage to their own business. But the injunction appears to have been granted because the picketing violated the state statute, and neither the statutory language nor the opinion of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court warrants a conclusion that the statute protects private rights, as most authorities would define the term. ”

“ Congress has taken in hand this particular type of controversy where it affects interstate commerce. In language almost identical to parts of the Pennsylvania statute, it has forbidden labor unions to exert certain types of coercion on employees through the medium of the employer. [5] It is not necessary or appropriate for us to surmise how the National Labor Relations Board might have decided this controversy had petitioners presented it to that body. The power and duty of primary decision lies with the Board, not with us. ”

“ Accordingly the special field of such rules is that part of human affairs in which individual interests predominate, and are likely to be asserted on the whole with sufficient vigour, and moreover no public harm is an obvious or necessary consequence of parties not caring to assert their rights in particular cases. * * * There fall more specially under rules of public law the duties and powers of different authorities in the State, making up what is usually known as the law of the Constitution ”

“ But usually the real significance and legal consequence of each term will depend upon its context and the nature of the interests it is invoked to distinguish.
Statutes may be called public because the rights conferred are of general application, while laws known as private affect few or selected individuals or localities. ”

“ This language is comparable, on the state level, to the language in the federal Act. If Congress was protecting a public, as opposed to a purely private, interest, the same could be said of the Pennsylvania Legislature. The State Supreme Court has not said otherwise. [23] The court opinion, of course, did not analyze in detail the state law basis for injunction in this case because it found lack of state jurisdiction, and the dissenting opinion discussed the jurisdictional aspect of the case and did not reach the merits. ”