holding a statute constitutional on its face when, although the statute might be unconstitutional as applied to private actors, the Court determined that it was constitutional as applied to public officials, and the parties challenging the law were public officials
How later courts described this case
- holding a statute constitutional on its face when, although the statute might be unconstitutional as applied to private actors, the Court determined that it was constitutional as applied to public officials, and the parties challenging the law were public officials
- stating that “one to whom application of a statute is constitutional will not be heard to attack the statute on the ground that impliedly it might also be taken as applying to other persons or other situations in which its application might be unconstitutional”
- holding that courts should "never ... anticipate a question of constitutional law in advance of the necessity of deciding it"
- refusing to declare an act facially unconstitutional where the act might be unconstitutional as applied to private actors but is certainly not unconstitutional as applied to public officials, and the parties challenging the law were public officials
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Mr. Justice Frankfurter,
with whom Mr. Justice Harlan concurs,
joining in the judgment.
The weighty presumptive validity with which the Civil Rights Act of 1957, like every enactment of Congress, comes here is not overborne by any claim urged against it. To deal with legislation so as to find unconstitutionality is to reverse the duty of courts to apply a statute so as to save it. Here this measure is sustained under familiar principles of constitutional law. Nor is there any procedural hurdle left to be cleared to sustain the suit of the United States. Whatever may have been the original force of Barney v. New York, 193 U. S. 430 , that decision has long ceased to be an obstruction, nor is any other decision in the way of our result in this case. And so I find it needless to canvass the multitude of opinions that may generally touch on, but do not govern, the issues now before us.