Universal Interpretive Shuttle Corporation v. Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Commission/Dissent Douglas

by William O. Douglas

United States Supreme Court

393 U.S. 186

Universal Interpretive Shuttle Corporation  v.  Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Commission

 Argued: Oct. 21, 22, 1968. --- Decided: Nov 25, 1968

Mr. Justice DOUGLAS, with whom Mr. Justice STEWART concurs, dissenting.

We have said over and again that we do not sit to review decisions on local law by District of Columbia courts where the reach of that law is confined to the District. District of Columbia v. Pace, 320 U.S. 698, 702, 64 S.Ct. 406, 408, 88 L.Ed. 408; Busby v. Electric Utilities Employees Union, 323 U.S. 72, 75, 65 S.Ct. 142, 144, 89 L.Ed. 78.

That law is not only peculiarly local; it is a compendium of a variety of laws drawn from numerous sources, with which the judges in the District are much more familiar than are we. No legal problem is more obviously peculiar to the District than the one posed by the present case. Traffic, including the movement of tourists, is a special concern of local government. The District Court held that the Secretary of the Interior, not WMATC, was the appropriate licensing authority. The Court of Appeals on a two-to-one vote reversed but did not file an opinion because 'the interests of the parties and of the public would be better served' by a prompt disposition of the case. The Court of Appeals by a two-to-one vote reversed denied a petition for rehearing.

The contrariety of views below suggests that this question of local law is not free from doubt. Certainly it is not a case where the decision is so palpably wrong as to make it the exceptional case for review by this Court. Nor is this question of local law so enmeshed with constitutional questions as to make appropriate its resolution here. See District of Columbia v. Little, 339 U.S. 1, 4, n. 1, 70 S.Ct. 468, 470, 94 L.Ed. 599; District of Columbia v. John R. Thompson Co., 346 U.S. 100, 73 S.Ct. 1007, 97 L.Ed. 1480.

These considerations make much more appropriate here than in Fisher v. United States, 328 U.S. 463, 476, 66 S.Ct. 1318, 1325, 90 L.Ed. 1382 (from which the quotation is taken), the following observation:

'Matters relating to law enforcement in the District are entrusted to the courts of the District. Our policy is not to interfere with the local rules of law which they fashion, save in exceptional situations where egregious error has been committed.

'Where the choice of the Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia in local matters between conflicting legal conclusions seems nicely balanced, we do not interfere.'

The present case could not be more precisely described.

Notes