Opinion of the Court. 337 U.S. the sovereign and we should give hospitable scope to that trend.28 But the reasoning is not applicable to suits for specific relief. For, it is one thing to provide a method by which a citizen may be compensated for a wrong done to him by the Government. It is a far different matter to permit a court to exercise its compulsive powers to restrain the Government from acting, or to compel it to act. There are the strongest reasons of public policy for the rule that such relief cannot be had against the sovereign. The Government, as representative of the community as a whole, cannot be stopped in its tracks by any plaintiff who presents a disputed question of property or contract right. As was early recognized, "The interference of the Courts with the performance of the ordinary duties of the executive departments of the government, would be productive of nothing but mischief . . . .” 29 There are limits, of course. Under our constitutional system, certain rights are protected against governmental action and, if such rights are infringed by the actions of officers of the Government, it is proper that the courts have the power to grant relief against those actions. But in the absence of a claim of constitutional limitation, the necessity of permitting the Government to carry out its functions unhampered by direct judicial intervention outweighs the possible disadvantage to the citizen in being relegated to the recovery of money damages after the event. It is argued that a sales agency, such as the War Assets Administration, is not the type of agency which requires the protection from direct judicial interference which the doctrine of sovereign immunity confers. We do not doubt that there may be some activities of the Government which do not require such protection. There are others 28 See Brooks v. United States, 337 U. S. 49 (1949). 29 Decatur v. Paulding, 14 Pet. 497, 516 (1840). 682 FRANKFURTER, J., dissenting. in which the necessity of immunity is apparent. But it is not for this Court to examine the necessity in each case. That is a function of the Congress. The Congress has, in many cases, entrusted the business of the Government to agencies which may contract in their own names and which are subject to suit in their own names. In other cases it has permitted suits for damages, but, significantly, not for specific relief, in the Court of Claims. The differentiations as to remedy which the Congress has erected would be rendered nugatory if the basis on which they rest-the assumed immunity of the sovereign from suit in the absence of consent-were undermined by an unwarranted extension of the Lee doctrine. The cause is reversed with directions that the complaint be dismissed. It is so ordered. MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS. I think that the principles announced by the Court are the ones which should govern the selling of government property. Less strict applications of those principles would cause intolerable interference with public administration. To make the right to sue the officer turn on whether by the law of sales title had passed to the buyer would clog this governmental function with intolerable burdens. So I have joined the Court's opinion. MR. JUSTICE RUTLEDGE Concurs in the result. MR. JUSTICE JACKSON dissents. MR. JUSTICE FRANKFURTER, with whom MR. JUSTICE BURTON Concurs, dissenting. Case-by-case adjudication gives to the judicial process the impact of actuality and thereby saves it from the hazards of generalizations insufficiently nourished by 337 U.S. FRANKFURTER, J., dissenting. experience. There is, however, an attendant weakness to a system that purports to pass merely on what are deemed to be the particular circumstances of a case. Consciously or unconsciously the pronouncements in an opinion too often exceed the justification of the circumstances on which they are based, or, contrariwise, judicial preoccupation with the claims of the immediate leads to a succession of ad hoc determinations making for eventual confusion and conflict. There comes a time when the general considerations underlying each specific situation must be exposed in order to bring the too unruly instances. into more fruitful harmony. The case before us presents one of those problems for the rational solution of which it becomes necessary, as a matter of judicial self-respect, to take soundings in order to know where we are and whither we are going. The case before us is this. The Government had some surplus coal at an Army camp in Texas. On March 11, 1947, the War Assets Administration, through the Regional Office in Dallas, Texas, invited a bid from the plaintiff, respondent here, for purchase of the coal. The Dallas office expressed thus its approval of the bid submitted by the plaintiff: your terms of placing $17,500.00 with the First National Bank, Dallas, Texas, for payment upon presentation of our invoices to said bank are accepted." Thereupon the plaintiff arranged for resale of the coal and its shipment abroad. On April 1, 1947, the Dallas office wired the plaintiff that unless the sum of $17,500 was deposited in the First National Bank in Dallas by noon April 4, "the sale will be cancelled and other disposition made." Though claiming that this demand was in the teeth of the contract, the plaintiff arranged for an irrevocable letter of credit payable through the First National Bank of Dallas to the War Assets Administration. The Dallas office now insisted that unless cash was deposited 682 FRANKFURTER, J., dissenting. "the sale of 10,000 tons of coal . . . will be cancelled ten days from this date." That office disregarded further endeavors by the plaintiff to adjust the matter, and on April 16 it informed the plaintiff that the contract was canceled. Having learned that the coal was to be sold to another concern, the plaintiff, asserting ownership in the coal and the threat of irreparable damage, brought this suit in the District Court of the United States for the District of Columbia to restrain the War Assets Administrator and those under his control from transferring the coal to any other person than the plaintiff.1 After issuing a temporary restraining order the District Court on May 6, 1947, dismissed the suit with this oral 1 1 The prayer for relief in the complaint is as follows: "(1) That this court issue its temporary restraining order against the defendant, his agents, assistants, deputies and employees and all persons acting or assuming to act under their direction, enjoining and restraining them from: "(a) Carrying into effect the purported illegal and unauthorized concellation [sic] of the sale to the plaintiff of this coal. "(b) Reselling or attempting to resell this coal to any other person whatsoever than the plaintiff, the legal owner thereof. "(c) Delivering any or all of this coal to any other person. "(2) That upon hearing of motion for a preliminary injunction that this Court continue the temporary restraining order as a preliminary injunction. "(3) That upon final hearing this Court make permanent the preliminary injunction. "(4) That upon hearing of this cause the Court decrees that: "(a) The sale of this coal to the plaintiff by letter of War Assets Administration, dated March 19, 1947, is still valid and in effect. "(b) That the purported sale to the Midland Coal Company is illegal, because title to this coal is in the plaintiff. "(c) That, in view of the delay and disruption of arrangements caused by the purported cancellation, plaintiff shall have thirty days from the date of this Court's final order in which to give shipping instructions. "(d) That the plaintiff may have such other further and different relief as may to the Court seem proper and just in the premises." FRANKFURTER, J., dissenting. 337 U.S. observation: "I am satisfied that this suit is in effect a suit for specific performance and the United States is a necessary party, and this Court is without jurisdiction." The Court of Appeals took a different view: "Appellant . . . did not seek the court's aid to interfere in the use of official discretion by the appellee. Such discretion was exercised at the time the contract with appellant was entered into. If that contract served to vest title immediately in appellant then it follows that the ruling in Philadelphia Co. v. Stimson, 223 U. S. 605, . is controlling here. . . . Clearly, then, it was incumbent upon the lower court in determining its jurisdictional capacity to decide the ultimate question of whether or not a contract of sale had been consummated between appellant and appellee." 165 F. 2d 235. . . The conflict between the District Court and the Court of Appeals on these facts reflects fairly enough the seeming disharmony of the numerous opinions in which this Court has dealt with the claim of immunity of government from unconsented suit. As to the States, legal irresponsibility was written into the Constitution by the Eleventh Amendment; as to the United States, it is derived by implication. Monaco v. Mississippi, 292 U. S. 313, 321; see Block, Suits Against Government Officers and the Sovereign Immunity Doctrine, 59 Harv. L. Rev., 1060, 1064-1065 (1946). The sources of the immunity are formally different but they present the same legal issues. The subject is not free from casuistry. This is doubtless due to the fact that a steady change of opinion has gradually undermined unquestioned acceptance of the sovereign's freedom from ordinary legal responsibility. The vehement speed with which the Eleventh Amendment displaced the decision in Chisholm v. Georgia, 2 Dall. 419 (1793), proves how deeply rooted that doctrine was in the early days of the Republic. See New |