distinguishing block grants from revenue sharing because revenue sharing provides for automatic distribution and because of difficulty in determining how revenue-sharing m oney is spent
How later courts described this case
- distinguishing block grants from revenue sharing because revenue sharing provides for automatic distribution and because of difficulty in determining how revenue-sharing m oney is spent
- "Where the two statutes in question are capable of standing together, there is no irreconcilable conflict."
- “[P]ost-passage remarks of legislators, however explicit, cannot serve to change the legislative intent of Congress expressed before the Act’s passage.... Such statements represent only the personal views of these legislators, since the statements were made after passage of the Act.”
- distinguishing between block grants and revenue sharing
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
JOHN R. BROWN, Chief Judge,
concurring:
I concur in the result and in the reasoning of the opinion. I cannot, however, refrain from pointing out that, paraphrasing the now famous quip of Judge Henry Friendly of the Second Circuit, our problem is to determine what Congress would think on an issue about which it has not thought. 1 We offer an extension to fit this case: had Congress thought, it would have told us what it thought.
To those who think that the judiciary is too quick to become too deeply involved in legislative solutions to the day’s problems, and who believe that courts should show a *464 greater restraint or, to adopt a moralistic tone, a “decent respect” for other decision-making bodies, this case is Exhibit A for a different view of how responsibility is divided. This exhibit supports the strongly held suspicion that too often the legislative view is: if our work is deficient, the courts will patch it up.
If our juryrig 2 patchwork efforts are deficient, the fault does not lie at our feet.
. See Nolan v. Transocean Air Lines, 2 Cir., 1960, 276 F.2d 280, 281 , rev’d, 365 U.S. 293 , 81 S.Ct. 555 , 5 L.Ed.2d 571 , on remand, 2 Cir., 290 F.2d 904 . Those of us who have borrowed this idea in the past hope that we have given a sufficient acknowledgment. See Wirth Ltd. v. S/S Acadia Forest, 5 Cir., 1976, 537 F.2d 1272, 1276 ; Hopkins v. Lockheed Aircraft Corp., 5 Cir., 1968, 394 F.2d 656, 657 ; Page v. St. Louis Southwestern Ry. Co., 5 Cir., 1965, 349 F.2d 820, 823 .
. See Little v. Green, 5 Cir., 1970, 428 F.2d 1061, 1067 . In this case the “jury” is not the court’s factfinder. Rather, it is the ship’s rudder, without which she is helpless.
1. 31 U.S.C. § 1221 et seq.
2. S.Rep.No. 92-1050, 92d Cong., 2d Sess., reprinted in 1972 U.S.Code Cong, and Admin. News, p. 3874.
Of course, the phrase no strings can be read in a narrow manner. For such a reading see Kushner and Werner, Revenue Sharing and Relocation: The Administrative Dilemma of Ostensibly Conflicting Congressional Directives, 5 Ecology L.Q. 433 , 438-442. Interestingly, the plaintiffs brief in this case is an edited version of this law review article.