United States v. International Boxing Club of New York/Dissent Frankfurter

by Felix Frankfurter

United States Supreme Court

348 U.S. 236

United States  v.  International Boxing Club of New York

 Argued: Nov. 10, 1954. --- Decided: Jan 31, 1955

Mr. Justice FRANKFURTER, with whom Mr. Justice MINTON joins, dissenting.

It would baffle the subtlest ingenuity to find a single differentiating factor between other sporting exhibitions, whether boxing or football or tennis, and baseball insofar as the conduct of the sport is relevant to the criteria or considerations by which the Sherman Law becomes applicable to a 'trade or commerce.' § 1, 26 Stat. 209, 15 U.S.C. § 1, 15 U.S.C.A. § 1. Indeed, the interstate aspects of baseball and the extent of the exploitation of baseball through mass media are far more extensive than is true of boxing. If the intrinsic applicability of the Sherman Law were the issue, no attempt would be made to differentiate the two sports.

In 1922, the Court found commercialized baseball outside the scope of the Sherman Law. Federal Baseball Club of Baltimore v. National League of Professional Baseball Clubs, 259 U.S. 200, 42 S.Ct. 465, 66 L.Ed. 898. Last Term the Court refused to re-examine 'the underlying issues' of this adjudication and adhered to it. Toolson v. New York Yankees, Inc., 346 U.S. 356, 74 S.Ct. 78, 98 L.Ed. 64. What were the 'underlying issues'? They were the constituents of baseball in relation to the Sherman Law. By adhering to that decision, the Court refused to depart from a judgment necessarily based on these constituent elements. To my understanding, that is what is meant by '(w) ithout re-examination of the underlying issues.' The Court decided as it did in the Toolson case as an application of the doctrine of stare decisis. That doctrine is not, to be sure, an imprisonment of reason. But neither is it a whimsy. It can hardly be that this Court gave a preferred position to baseball because it is the great American sport. I do not suppose that the Court would treat the national anthem differently from other songs if the nature of a song became relevant to adjudication. If stare decisis be one aspect of law, as it is, to disregard it in identic situations is mere caprice.

Congress, on the other hand, may yield to sentiment and be capricious, subject only to due process. As a matter of fact, one of the explicit factors that led to the result in Toolson was the recognition of congressional refusal to upset the Federal Baseball decision. But as the Government with commendable candor recognizes, Congress was not asked to avert the threat of litigation against baseball by providing a specific exemption of that sport from the provisions of the Sherman Law. The sponsors of this relief did not ask immunity for baseball as such. The 'legislation' to which reference was made in the Toolson case consisted of bills which sought exemption for 'organized professional sports enterprises (and) acts in the conduct of such enterprises.' (H.R. 4229, 4230, 4231, and S. 1526, 82d Cong., 1st Sess.) Since, in the light of all the circumstances, Federal Baseball was left undisturbed by Toolson, I cannot bring myself to construe the respect that ws thus accorded to stare decisis to be narrower than that all situations identic with what was passed on in the Federal Baseball case should be covered by it. I cannot translate even the narrowest conception of stare decisis into the equivalent of writing into the Sherman Law an exemption of baseball to the exclusion of every other sport different not one legal jot or tittle from it.

Between them, this case and Shubert illustrate that nice but rational distinctions are inevitable in adjudication. I agree with the Court's opinion in Shubert for precisely the reason that constrains me to dissent in this caes. Within a year after Federal Baseball the Court, again unanimously and through the same writer, found that a bill against the show business based on the Sherman Law was not so frivolous as to call for dismissal. Hart v. B. F. Keith Vaudeville Exchange, 262 U.S. 271, 43 S.Ct. 540, 67 L.Ed. 977. For more than 30 years, therefore, these two decisions stood as the law. The Shubert case plainly falls within the adjudication of Hart. By the same process of reasoning, boxing falls within Federal Baseball, which this Court revitalized in Toolson despite all the new factors on which the dissent in Toolson relied.

Whatever unsavory elements there be in boxing contests is quite beside the mark. The States to which these exhibitions are distasteful are possessed of the honorable and effective remedy of self-help. They need not sanction pugilistic exhibitions, or may sanction them only under conditions that safeguard their notions of the public welfare.

Notes