INTERNATIONAL LONGSHOREMEN’S AND WAREHOUSEMEN’S UNION, LOCAL 37, et al. v. BOYD, DISTRICT DIRECTOR, IMMIGRATION AND NATURALIZATION SERVICE.
No. 195.
Argued January 6, 1954.
Decided March 8, 1954.
A. L. Wirin argued the cause for appellants. With him on the brief was Norman Leonard.
Charles Gordon argued the cause for appellee. With him on the brief were Acting Solicitor General Stern, Assistant Attorney General Olney, John F. Davis, Beatrice Rosenberg and L. Paul Winings.
Mr. Justice Frankfurter
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This is an action by Local 37 of the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union and several of its alien members to enjoin the District Director of Immigration and Naturalization at Seattle from so construing § 212 (d) (7) of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 as to treat aliens domiciled in the continental United States returning from temporary work in Alaska as if they were aliens entering the United States for the first time. Declaratory relief to the same effect is also sought. Since petitioners asserted in the alternative that such a construction of the challenged statute would be unconstitutional, a three-judge district court was convened. The case came before it on stipulated facts and issues of law, from which it appeared that the union has over three thousand members who work every summer in the herring and salmon canneries of Alaska, that some of these are aliens, and that if alien workers going to Alaska for the 1953 canning season were excluded on their return, their “contract and property rights [would] be jeopardized and forfeited.” The District Court entertained the suit but dismissed it on the merits. 111 F. Supp. 802. In our order of October 12, 1953, we postponed the question of jurisdiction to the hearing on the merits. 346 U. S. 804.
On this appeal, appellee contends that the District Court should not have reached the statutory and constitutional questions — that it should have dismissed the suit for want of a “case or controversy,” for lack of standing on the union’s part to bring this action, because the Attorney General was an indispensable party, and because habeas corpus is the exclusive method for judicial inquiry in deportation cases. Since the first objection is conclusive, there is an end of the matter.
Appellants in effect asked the District Court to rule that a statute the sanctions of which had not been set in motion against individuals on whose behalf relief was sought, because an occasion for doing so had not arisen, would not be applied to them if in the future such a contingency should arise. That is not a lawsuit to enforce a right; it is an endeavor to obtain a court’s assurance that a statute does not govern hypothetical situations that may or may not make the challenged statute applicable. Determination of the scope and constitutionality of legislation in advance of its immediate adverse effect in the context of a concrete case involves too remote and abstract an inquiry for the proper exercise of the judicial function. United Public Workers v. Mitchell, 330 U. S. 75; see Muskrat v. United States, 219 U. S. 346, and Alabama State Federation of Labor v. McAdory, 325 U. S. 450. Since we do not have on the record before us a controversy appropriate for adjudication, the judgment of the District Court must be vacated, with directions to dismiss the complaint.
It is so ordered.
This section states that the exclusionary provisions of § 212 (a) shall, with exceptions not here relevant, “be applicable to any alien who shall leave Hawaii, Alaska, Guam, Puerto Rico, or the Virgin Islands of the United States, and who seeks to enter the continental United States . . . 8 U. S. C. § 1182 (d) (7).
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the ideological "direction" of the decision ("liberal", "conservative", or "unspecifiable"). Use "unspecifiable" if the issue does not lend itself to a liberal or conservative description (e.g., a boundary dispute between two states, real property, wills and estates), or because no convention exists as to which is the liberal side and which is the conservative side (e.g., the legislative veto). Specification of the ideological direction comports with conventional usage. In the context of issues pertaining to criminal procedure, civil rights, First Amendment, due process, privacy, and attorneys, consider liberal to be pro-person accused or convicted of crime, or denied a jury trial, pro-civil liberties or civil rights claimant, especially those exercising less protected civil rights (e.g., homosexuality), pro-child or juvenile, pro-indigent pro-Indian, pro-affirmative action, pro-neutrality in establishment clause cases, pro-female in abortion, pro-underdog, anti-slavery, incorporation of foreign territories anti-government in the context of due process, except for takings clause cases where a pro-government, anti-owner vote is considered liberal except in criminal forfeiture cases or those where the taking is pro-business violation of due process by exercising jurisdiction over nonresident, pro-attorney or governmental official in non-liability cases, pro-accountability and/or anti-corruption in campaign spending pro-privacy vis-a-vis the 1st Amendment where the privacy invaded is that of mental incompetents, pro-disclosure in Freedom of Information Act issues except for employment and student records. In the context of issues pertaining to unions and economic activity, consider liberal to be pro-union except in union antitrust where liberal = pro-competition, pro-government, anti-business anti-employer, pro-competition, pro-injured person, pro-indigent, pro-small business vis-a-vis large business pro-state/anti-business in state tax cases, pro-debtor, pro-bankrupt, pro-Indian, pro-environmental protection, pro-economic underdog pro-consumer, pro-accountability in governmental corruption, pro-original grantee, purchaser, or occupant in state and territorial land claims anti-union member or employee vis-a-vis union, anti-union in union antitrust, anti-union in union or closed shop, pro-trial in arbitration. In the context of issues pertaining to judicial power, consider liberal to be pro-exercise of judicial power, pro-judicial "activism", pro-judicial review of administrative action. In the context of issues pertaining to federalism, consider liberal to be pro-federal power, pro-executive power in executive/congressional disputes, anti-state. In the context of issues pertaining to federal taxation, consider liberal to be pro-United States and conservative pro-taxpayer. In miscellaneous, consider conservative the incorporation of foreign territories and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states or judcial authority vis-a-vis state or federal legislative authority, and consider liberal legislative veto. In interstate relations and private law issues, consider unspecifiable in all cases.