# United States v. Raines

> Supreme Court of the United States · February 29, 1960 · 362 U.S. 17

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/8937761

## Case

- **Full name:** UNITED STATES v. RAINES
- **Court:** Supreme Court of the United States
- **Decided:** February 29, 1960
- **Citations:** 362 U.S. 17; 80 S. Ct. 519; 4 L. Ed. 2d 524; 1960 U.S. LEXIS 2012
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Frankfurter
- **Judges:** Brennan, Frankfurter, Harlan, Whom
- **Cited by:** 960 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/8937761

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- 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"
- explaining why a district court, mindful of the constitutional avoidance doctrine, should not consider the constitutionality of a statute in applications not before it

## Opinion text

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.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/8937761. Public record. Not legal advice.