In re Debs

158 U.S. 564 (1895), argued 25–26 Mar. 1895, decided 27 May 1895 by vote of 9 to 0; Brewer for the Court. By refusing to grant a writ of habeas corpus to Eugene Debs, president of the American Railway Union, the Supreme Court sanctioned the use of injunctions against striking labor unions. During the depression of the 1890s, the Pullman company, while still paying dividends, reduced its workers' pay literally to the starvation level. The laborers went on strike and were soon adopted by the newly formed American Railway Union. The union pursued a strategy of boycotting railroads using Pullman cars. Members refused to handle trains with the cars; if dismissed by the road, then all the company's union members would strike. This plan was a direct challenge to the General Managers Association, a group of twenty‐six Chicago railroads. Claiming that their contracts required them to use Pullman cars, they provoked strikes throughout the Midwest and nation by firing trainmen who refused to handle Pullman cars. Contending that the strikers were interfering with interstate commerce and the mails, the association urged federal intervention. Attorney General Richard Olney, fearing the violence of a large strike, came to the association's aid. While wanting to send in the army, Olney settled initially for lesser measures. He created more than five thousand special deputies to preserve order, prepared a case of criminal conspiracy against the union leaders, and sought an injunction in federal circuit court that would prohibit interference with the railroads' businesses. Not surprisingly, these actions and the activities of strikebreakers provoked rioting. To suppress violence, blown out of proportion by an alarmist press, the government sent in troops.

The federal circuit court, reasoning that the strike was a combination in restraint of interstate commerce, granted a sweeping injunction. The decree applied to the leaders of the union, all those who combined with them, and any persons whomsoever. It commanded such individuals to cease hindering the railroads, including by means of persuading employees, from carrying the mails and engaging in interstate commerce. Within a week of his arrest for criminal conspiracy, Debs and his fellow officers were again arrested for contempt of court for violating this injunction. While they were in jail the strike folded and the new union crumpled. Though the criminal trial collapsed, the contempt of court charge netted Debs six months' imprisonment. He sought release by writ of habeas corpus to the Supreme Court, arguing that he was tried for a criminal act in a court of equity and thus denied his constitutional right of trial by jury.

Justice David J. Brewer, speaking for a unanimous Supreme Court, rejected Debs's plea. Refusing to rest the decision on the narrow ground of a conspiracy in restraint of trade, he based the ruling on broad principles. Brewer asserted that the government of the United States, though a government of enumerated powers, had full attributes of sovereignty, within those powers. It could forcibly remove any obstructions to commerce or the mails, either by military power or through an appeal to the federal courts' equity power. He labeled the union's action to be a public nuisance, which like a private nuisance was subject to equity jurisdiction. That Debs's acts violated the criminal law did not bar equitable relief. The actions also threatened the property rights of the railroads, which were protected under equity jurisdiction. Therefore, no matter what occurred on the criminal side of the law, the equity side could also be utilized. To preserve their authority in such equity proceedings courts needed the power to punish through contempt. Thus, Brewer rejected the argument that Debs had been denied a jury trial. Brewer touted the use of federal tribunals as a better method than armed force in settling labor troubles; it met the potential mob violence not with force but with the rule of law. For the next thirty years, corporations faced with labor troubles turned to the Federal courts; the Pullman injunction proved the model for many others. Not until the New Deal era did such labor injunctions fade away.

See also Commerce Power; Injunctions and Equitable Remedies; Labor; Lower Federal Courts.

— Richard F. Hamm

In Re Debs, 158 U.S. 564 (1895). Influenced by his attorney general, Richard Olney, and convinced that the Pullman strike of June–July 1894 was interfering with interstate commerce and the delivery of mails, President Grover Cleveland ordered troops into Chicago. Although the Sherman Antitrust Act had proved of little value in controlling monopoly and Olney himself considered it useless, he asked and secured from the U.S. court in Chicago an injunction based on this act and on the law prohibiting obstruction of the mails. Described as the "omnibus injunction" because of its wide sweep, it forbade Eugene V. Debs, president of the American Railway Union, and other officers "from in any way or manner interfering with, hindering, obstructing or stopping" the business of the railroads entering Chicago. Arrested for alleged violation of the injunction on 10 July, Debs and other leaders were found guilty, 14 December, of contempt and sentenced to jail, the sentences varying from three to six months (United States v. Debs, 64 Federal Reporter 724). Carried to the Supreme Court on a writ of habeas corpus, the sentence was upheld, on 27 May 1895, on the government's constitutional authority over inter-state commerce and the mails. While the circuit court had based the injunction specifically on the Sherman Act, Justice David J. Brewer of the Supreme Court rested its decision on "broader grounds." Injunctions had traditionally been used to protect individuals in civil or criminal matters; with the Debs injunction, the Court dramatically expanded its reach into the preservation of national sovereignty and social order.

Bibliography

Cooper, Jerry M. The Army and Civil Disorder: Federal Military Intervention in Labor Disputes, 1877–1900. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1980.

Eggert, Gerald C. Railroad Labor Disputes. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1967.

———. Steelmasters and Labor Reform, 1886–1923. Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1981.

Eugene V. Debs, socialist labor leader; photographed as a young man. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
(Click to enlarge)

by David J. Brewer, 1895

The Pullman Strike in Chicago in 1894 raised all kinds of legal, political, economic, and social questions. Could a labor union interfere with the operation of an entire industry in order to obtain its aims? Could, or should, the government act on behalf of industry? How could wage earners express their discontent without incurring the wrath of big business and government? Many of these questions were answered, at least temporarily, by the swift government action that broke the strike. When the injunction served on the union in 1894 was disobeyed by Socialist and labor organizer Eugene Debs and the other leaders of the American Railway Union, it was reaffirmed by the Supreme Court (U.S. v. Debs, 1894), and the union was declared to be acting illegally in restraint of trade under the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. In addition, an appeal for a writ of habeas corpus for Debs, who was sentenced to six months in jail, was denied. Justice David Brewer, speaking for the Supreme Court, explained the denial in a ruling delivered on May 27, 1895, a portion of which appears below.

The case presented by the bill is this: The United States, finding that the interstate transportation of persons and property, as well as the carriage of the mails, is forcibly obstructed, and that a combination and conspiracy exists to subject the control of such transportation to the will of the conspirators, applied to one of their courts, sitting as a court of equity, for an injunction to restrain such obstruction and prevent carrying into effect such conspiracy. Two questions of importance are presented: First, are the relations of the general government to interstate commerce and the transportation of the mails such as authorize a direct interference to prevent a forcible obstruction thereof? Second, if authority exists, as authority in governmental affairs implies both power and duty, has a court of equity jurisdiction to issue an injunction in aid of the performance of such duty? ...

What are the relations of the general government to interstate commerce and the transportation of the mails? They are those of direct supervision, control, and management. While under the dual system which prevails with us the powers of government are distributed between the state and the nation, and while the latter is properly styled a government of enumerated powers, yet, within the limits of such enumeration, it has all the attributes of sovereignty, and, in the exercise of those enumerated powers, acts directly upon the citizen and not through the intermediate agency of the state. ...

Obviously these powers given to the national government over interstate commerce and in respect to the transportation of the mails were not dormant and unused. Congress had taken hold of these two matters and, by various and specific acts, had assumed and exercised the powers given to it, and was in the full discharge of its duty to regulate interstate commerce and carry the mails. The validity of such exercise and the exclusiveness of its control had been again and again presented to this Court for consideration.

It is curious to note the fact that in a large proportion of the cases in respect to interstate commerce brought to this Court the question presented was of the validity of state legislation in its bearings upon interstate commerce, and the uniform course of decision has been to declare that it is not within the competency of a state to legislate in such a manner as to obstruct interstate commerce. If a state with its recognized powers of sovereignty is impotent to obstruct interstate commerce, can it be that any mere voluntary association of individuals within the limits of that state has a power which the state itself does not possess?

As, under the Constitution, power over interstate commerce and the transportation of the mails is vested in the national government, and Congress by virtue of such grant has assumed actual and direct control, it follows that the national government may prevent any unlawful and forcible interference therewith. But how shall this be accomplished? Doubtless, it is within the competency of Congress to prescribe by legislation that any interference with these matters shall be offenses against the United States, and prosecuted and punished by indictment in the proper courts. But is that the only remedy? Have the vast interests of the nation in interstate commerce and in the transportation of the mails no other protection than lies in the possible punishment of those who interfere with it?

To ask the question is to answer it. By Article III, Section 2, Clause 3 of the federal Constitution, it is provided: "The trial of all crimes except in cases of impeachment shall be by jury; and such trial shall be held in the state where the said crime shall have been committed." If all the inhabitants of a state, or even a great body of them, should combine to obstruct interstate commerce or the transportation of the mails, prosecutions for such offenses had in such a community would be doomed in advance to failure. And if the certainty of such failure was known, and the national government had no other way to enforce the freedom of interstate commerce and the transportation of the mails than by prosecution and punishment for interference therewith, the whole interests of the nation in these respects would be at the absolute mercy of a portion of the inhabitants of that single state.

But there is no such impotency in the national government. The entire strength of the nation may be used to enforce in any part of the land the full and free exercise of all national powers and the security of all rights entrusted by the Constitution to its care. The strong arm of the national government may be put forth to brush away all obstructions to the freedom of interstate commerce or the transportation of the mails. If the emergency arises, the Army of the nation, and all its militia, are at the service of the nation to compel obedience to its laws.

But passing to the second question, is there no other alternative than the use of force on the part of the executive authorities whenever obstructions arise to the freedom of interstate commerce or the transportation of the mails? Is the Army the only instrument by which rights of the public can be enforced and the peace of the nation preserved? Grant that any public nuisance may be forcibly abated either at the instance of the authorities or by any individual suffering private damage therefrom, the existence of this right of forcible abatement is not inconsistent with nor does it destroy the right of appeal in an orderly way to the courts for a judicial determination, and an exercise of their powers by writ of injunction and otherwise to accomplish the same result. ...

So, in the case before us, the right to use force does not exclude the right of appeal to the courts for a judicial determination and for the exercise of all their powers of prevention. Indeed, it is more to the praise than to the blame of the government that, instead of determining for itself questions of right and wrong on the part of these petitioners and their associates and enforcing that determination by the club of the policeman and the bayonet of the soldier, it submitted all those questions to the peaceful determination of judicial tribunals and invoked their consideration and judgment as to the measure of its rights and powers and the correlative obligations of those against whom it made complaint. And it is equally to the credit of the latter that the judgment of those tribunals was by the great body of them respected, and the troubles which threatened so much disaster terminated.

Neither can it be doubted that the government has such an interest in the subject matter as enables it to appear as party plaintiff in this suit. It is said that equity only interferes for the protection of property and that the government has no property interest. A sufficient reply is that the United States have a property in the mails, the protection of which was one of the purposes of this bill. ...

We do not care to place our decision upon this ground alone. Every government, entrusted, by the very terms of its being, with powers and duties to be exercised and discharged for the general welfare, has a right to apply to its own courts for any proper assistance in the exercise of the one and the discharge of the other, and it is no sufficient answer to its appeal to one of these courts that it has no pecuniary interest in the matter. The obligations which it is under to promote the interest of all, and to prevent the wrongdoing of one resulting in injury to the general welfare, is often of itself sufficient to give it a standing in court. This proposition in some of its relations has heretofore received the sanction of this Court. In United States v. San Jacinto Tin Co., 125 U.S. 273, 285, was presented an application of the United States to cancel and annul a patent for land on the ground that it was obtained by fraud or mistake. The right of the United States to maintain such a suit was affirmed, though it was held that if the controversy was really one only between individuals in respect to their claims to property, the government ought not to be permitted to interfere. ...

It is obvious from these decisions that while it is not the province of the government to interfere in any mere matter of private controversy between individuals, or to use its great powers to enforce the rights of one against another, yet, whenever the wrongs complained of are such as affect the public at large, and are in respect of matters which by the Constitution are entrusted to the care of the nation, and concerning which the nation owes the duty to all the citizens of securing to them their common rights, then the mere fact that the government has no pecuniary interest in the controversy is not sufficient to exclude it from the courts or prevent it from taking measures therein to fully discharge those constitutional duties.

The national government, given by the Constitution power to regulate interstate commerce, has by express statute assumed jurisdiction over such commerce when carried upon railroads. It is charged, therefore, with the duty of keeping those highways of interstate commerce free from obstruction, for it has always been recognized as one of the powers and duties of a government to remove obstructions from the highways under its control. ...

Up to a recent date, commerce, both interstate and international, was mainly by water, and it is not strange that both the legislation of Congress and the cases in the courts have been principally concerned therewith. The fact that in recent years interstate commerce has come mainly to be carried on by railroads and over artificial highways has in no manner narrowed the scope of the constitutional provision or abridged the power of Congress over such commerce. On the contrary, the same fullness of control exists in the one case as in the other, and the same power to remove obstructions from the one as from the other.

Constitutional provisions do not change, but their operation extends to new matters as the modes of business and the habits of life of the people vary with each succeeding generation. The law of the common carrier is the same today as when transportation on land was by coach and wagon, and on water by canalboat and sailing vessel, yet in its actual operation it touches and regulates transportation by modes then unknown, the railroad train and the steamship. Just so is it with the grant to the national government of power over interstate commerce. The Constitution has not changed. The power is the same. But it operates today upon modes of interstate commerce unknown to the fathers, and it will operate with equal force upon any new modes of such commerce which the future may develop. ...

That the bill filed in this case alleged special facts calling for the exercise of all the powers of the court is not open to question. The picture drawn in it of the vast interests involved, not merely of the city of Chicago and the state of Illinois but of all the states, and the general confusion into which the interstate commerce of the country was thrown; the forcible interference with that commerce; the attempted exercise by individuals of powers belonging only to government, and the threatened continuance of such invasions of public right, presented a condition of affairs which called for the fullest exercise of all the powers of the courts. If ever there was a special exigency, one which demanded that the court should do all that courts can do, it was disclosed by this bill, and we need not turn to the public history of the day, which only reaffirms with clearest emphasis all its allegations. ...

We have given to this case the most careful and anxious attention, for we realize that it touches closely questions of supreme importance to the people of this country. Summing up our conclusions, we hold that the government of the United States is one having jurisdiction over every foot of soil within its territory, and acting directly upon each citizen; that while it is a government of enumerated powers, it has within the limits of those powers all the attributes of sovereignty; that to it is committed power over interstate commerce and the transmission of the mail; that the powers thus conferred upon the national government are not dormant but have been assumed and put into practical exercise by the legislation of Congress; that in the exercise of those powers it is competent for the nation to remove all obstructions upon highways, natural or artificial, to the passage of interstate commerce or the carrying of the mail; that while it may be competent for the government (through the executive branch and in the use of the entire executive power of the nation) to forcibly remove all such obstructions, it is equally within its competency to appeal to the civil courts for an inquiry and determination as to the existence and character of any alleged obstructions, and if such are found to exist, or threaten to occur, to invoke the powers of those courts to remove or restrain such obstructions; that the jurisdiction of courts to interfere in such matters by injunction is one recognized from ancient times and by indubitable authority; that such jurisdiction is not ousted by the fact that the obstructions are accompanied by or consist of acts in themselves violations of the criminal law; that the proceeding by injunction is of a civil character and may be enforced by proceedings in contempt; that such proceedings are not in execution of the criminal laws of the land; that the penalty for a violation of injunction is no substitute for and no defense to a prosecution for any criminal offenses committed in the course of such violation; that the complaint filed in this case clearly showed an existing obstruction of artificial highways for the passage of interstate commerce and the transmission of the mail - an obstruction not only temporarily existing, but threatening to continue; that under such complaint the Circuit Court had power to issue its process of injunction; that it having been issued and served on these defendants, the Circuit Court had authority to inquire whether its orders had been disobeyed, and when it found that they had been, then to proceed under Section 725, Revised Statutes, which grants power "to punish, by fine or imprisonment ... disobedience ... by any party ... or other person, to any lawful writ, process, order, rule, decree, or command," and enter the order of punishment complained of; and, finally, that, the Circuit Court, having full jurisdiction in the premises, its finding of the fact of disobedience is not open to review on habeas corpus in this or any other court. ...

We enter into no examination of the act of July 2, 1890 ... upon which the Circuit Court relied mainly to sustain its jurisdiction. It must not be understood from this that we dissent from the conclusions of that court in reference to the scope of the act, but simply that we prefer to rest our judgment on the broader ground which has been discussed in this opinion, believing it of importance that the principles underlying it should be fully stated and affirmed.

The petition for a writ of habeas corpus is denied.

In re Debs
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued March 25–26, 1895 Decided May 27, 1895
Full case name	In re Eugene V. Debs, Petitioner
Citations	158 U.S. 564 (more) 15 S. Ct. 900; 39 L. Ed. 1092; 1895 U.S. LEXIS 2279
Holding
The court ruled that the government had a right to regulate interstate commerce and ensure the operations of the Postal Service, along with a responsibility to "ensure the general welfare of the public."
Court membership
Chief Justice Melville Fuller Associate Justices Stephen J. Field · John M. Harlan Horace Gray · David J. Brewer Henry B. Brown · George Shiras, Jr. Howell E. Jackson · Edward D. White
Case opinions
Majority	Brewer, joined by unanimous
Laws applied
U.S. Const.

In re Debs, 158 U.S. 564 (1895), ^[1] was a United States Supreme Court decision handed down concerning Eugene V. Debs and labor unions. Debs, president of the American Railway Union, had been involved in the Pullman Strike earlier in 1894 and challenged the federal injunction ordering the strikers back to work where they would face being fired. The injunction had been issued because of the violent nature of the strike. However, Debs refused to end the strike and was subsequently cited for contempt of court; he appealed the decision to the courts.

The main question being debated was whether the federal government had a right to issue the injunction, which dealt with both interstate and intrastate commerce and shipping on rail cars. With an opinion written by Justice David Josiah Brewer, the court ruled in a unanimous decision in favor of the U.S. government. Joined by Chief Justice Melville Fuller and Associate Justices Stephen Johnson Field, John Marshall Harlan, Horace Gray, Henry Billings Brown, George Shiras, Jr., Howell Edmunds Jackson, and Edward Douglass White, the court ruled that the government had a right to regulate interstate commerce and ensure the operations of the Postal Service, along with a responsibility to "ensure the general welfare of the public."

See also

• Debs v. United States
• List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 158

Further Reading

Papke, David Ray (1999. The Pullman Case: The Clash of Labor and Capital in Industrial America. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas ISBN 070060547

External links

1. ^ Full text of the decision courtesy of FindLaw

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