Schillinger V. United States - Opinion of The Court

Opinion of The Court

The doctrine of sovereign immunity provides that the United States cannot be sued without its consent. When Congress consents to suits against the government, it has "an absolute discretion to specify the cases and contingencies in which the liability of the government is submitted to the courts for judicial determination." The courts may not "go beyond the letter of such consent," no matter how beneficial they may deem it to do so, for only Congress has that power.

Until the creation of the Court of Claims in 1855, the only recourse of claimants that the United States had wronged them was to appeal to Congress. The jurisdictional statute for the court defined the claims that could be submitted to the Court of Claims as follows:

The Court of Claims shall have jurisdiction to hear and determine all claims founded upon the Constitution of the United States or any law of Congress …or upon any contract, expressed or implied, with the Government of the United States, or for damages …in cases not sounding in tort, in respect of which claims the party would be entitled to redress against the United States … if the United States were suable.

The Court of Claims thus has no jurisdiction over claims against the government for mere torts. To be sure, the Constitution forbids the taking of private property for public uses without just compensation. But that does not create a claim founded upon the Constitution of the United States and within the jurisdictional grant of the Court of Claims. Congress never intended that every wrongful seizure of property by an officer of the government, the Court explained, would expose the government to an action for damages in the Court of Claims, for the statute expressly excludes tort actions and that exclusion would be meaningless under the foregoing broad reading.

That Schillinger's action was one sounding in tort is clear, the Court said, for the petition charges a wrongful appropriation by the government, against the protest of the claimants, and prays to recover the damages done by the wrong. There is no express or implied contract—no statement tending to show a "coming together of minds" in respect to anything. The Court therefore concluded:

Do the facts, as stated in the petition or as found by the court, show anything more than a wrong done, and can this be adjudged other than a case "sounding in tort"? We think not, and therefore the judgment of the Court of Claims is affirmed.