Wiley Blount Rutledge

“ Leaving out of account, therefore, any supposed effect of the Erie decision, we nevertheless are of opinion that state law should not be selected as the federal rule for governing the matter in issue. Not only is the government-soldier relation distinctively and exclusively a creation of federal law, but we know of no good reason why the Government's right to be indemnified in these circumstances, or the lack of such a right, should vary in accordance with the different rulings of the several states, simply because the soldier marches or today perhaps as often flies across state lines. ”

“ Perhaps no relation between the Government and a citizen is more distinctively federal in character than that between it and members of its armed forces. To whatever extent state law may apply to govern the relations between soldiers or others in the armed forces and persons outside them or nonfederal governmental agencies, the scope, nature, legal incidents and consequences of the relation between persons in service and the Government are fundamentally derived from federal sources and governed by federal authority. ”

“ Congress, not this Court or the other federal courts, is the custodian of the national purse. By the same token it is the primary and most often the exclusive arbiter of federal fiscal affairs. And these comprehend, as we have said, securing the treasury or the government against financial losses however inflicted, including requiring reimbursement for injuries creating them, as well as filling the treasury itself. ”

“ The tort law analogy is brought forth, indeed, not to secure a new step forward in expanding the recognized area for applying settled principles of that law as such, or for creating new ones. It is advanced rather as the instrument for determining and establishing the federal fiscal and regulatory policies which the Government's executive arm thinks should prevail in a situation not covered by traditionally established liabilities.
Whatever the merits of the policy, itsconversion into law is a proper subject for congressional action, not for any creative power of ours. ”

“ It is enough for present purposes to point out that they exist, cover a variety of situations, and generally involve matters in which application of local law not only affords a convenient and fair mode of disposition, but also is either inescapable, as in the illustration given above, or does not result in substantially diversified treatment where uniformity is indicated as more appropriate, in view of the nature of the subject matter and the specific issues affecting the Government's interest. ”

“ Moreover Congress without doubt has been conscious throughout most of its history that the Government constantly sustains losses through the tortious or even criminal conduct of persons interfering with federal funds, property and relationships. ”

“ If the defendant in this case had been held liable for negligently inflicting personal injuries on a civilian, it would have been obliged to pay, among other items of damage, the reasonable cost of resulting care by his doctor, hospital and nurse, and the earnings lost during the period of disability. If the civilian bore this cost himself, it would be part of his own damage; if the civilian were a wife and the expense fell upon her husband, he would be entitled to recover it; if the civilian were a child, it would be recoverable by the parent. ”

“ These embrace particularly the liabilities created by the common law, arising from tortious injuries inflicted upon persons standing in various special legal relationships, and causing harm not only to the injured person but also, as for loss of services and assimilated injuries, to the person to whom he is bound by the relation's tie. ”

“ It is rather for an independent liability owing directly to itself as for deprivation of the soldier's services and 'indemnity' for losses caused in discharging its duty to care for him consequent upon the injuries inflicted by appellants. ”

“ These costs, which essentially fall upon the United States by reason of the sovereign-soldier relationship, the Court holds cannot be recovered by the United States from the wrongdoer as the parent can in the case of a child or the husband can in the case of a wife. ”

“ Compare Serjeant Manning's oft-quoted statement that 'the quasi fiction of servitium amisit affords protection to the rich man whose daughter occasionally makes his tea, but leaves without ledress the poor man whose child is sent unprotected to earn her bread amongst strangers.' Note to Grinnell v. ”