actually infiltrate into the south china sea but that has nothing to do with whether or not the words served in vietnam ought to be interpreted as including the territorial understood vietnam to include the territorial seas by virtue of international law and recognition thereof that's correct your honor and i think congress is presumed to know the law maybe that's not always the best assumption but in this case i think the legislative history indicates that base harbor and territorial waters i'm glad you asked that question because i was going to have to disclose that perfect carnally the statute is or excuse me the bill is pending before the house veteran problem with what they call the pay for the offset on that is you go act it was a political issue and it was taped it's being brought up again next this coming tuesday and fact i just saw this morning the revised bill which actually wind the wind was offsetting from vietnam so they were going to launch and recover aircraft or sometimes of an aircraft or shot or they would go into to pick it up but you're right this is excellent case in that respect because the  that reduces your efficiency and makes water a problem as an engineer on the ships sometimes in the middle of the night i was having the hero the reports on the water situation water was my business and it was a problem  i think that one of the things we shown and was not available to hans was the fact that there has been the infiltration into the south china safe if you look at you know appendix one of the seven talked about question and that's i guess just so i can keep things straight in my head all of this data and test studies that you're explaining about the ground water going into the blue  of whether the statute itself when it's as service in the republic of vietnam is inherently unambiguous inherently clear and necessarily you know clues territorial waters i think there's two explained i think it explained why it didn't feel like you would if apply create a different result that's correct your honor but if you do you explain how we should think about that i mean on one level it didn't address it in the first opinion but he did address it in the second opinion and concluded that it wasn't going to in this particular case help the veteran yes ron but you remember that was based  vietnam or not i believe it is considered in vietnam for purposes of you know maritime jurisdiction and other purposes of international law the hospital or addressed the same argument in determining whether congress is intent was clear enough to look to the legislative history mr haas suggested that there was a treaty that defined the sovereignty of vietnam as including its territorial waters and the court said there's no indication that congress chose any of these competing methods for defining the phrase republic of vietnam in the agent orange act and therefore moved on to step two mr but if if they court was incorrect i may be step one of chevron is looking at whether or not congress is intent is clear from the language of the statute itself so i'm not sure exactly where the pro veteran candidate would come in to say that a language  otherwise then big u s becomes unambiguous interesting argument you could make on behalf of drug smugglers and were apprehended within twelve miles of the united states shura except that if there is an indication in the laws that govern the jurisdiction of the statute then of the united states and that would be clearly a political there here the statute itself was not seeking to define vietnam's jurisdictional reach or the powers that be and i would have over its water it was simply seeking to define which veterans can use presumption of exposure to herbicides and that was based not on the sovereignty of the nation which is completely unrelated to think through this very claim and canon i to try to understand the meaning of the statute and and so what is the government's view of how that applies in the context of a statute relating to veterans benefits or are you saying that it really doesn't have any role for me no i think it's wrapped up into the chevron step to review of the agency's interpretation but i would resist that you would agree that opinions like series terry are cetera all say  the provender in claiming can and cannot override a reasonable and reasonable ages interpretation of ambiguous statute practice and those then so then the provender the claimant can and phrase but was o deference and was reasonable and was not overcome by the proclaim and canon because it would not necessarily result in a pro death or and result in act in every instance and they noted that the way that the highest panel decision is but i think it is helpful and instructive that the court recognize it was waived but then said we're never the less going to look at this a determine whether or not it would have had an effect on the way we do you do you statute was reasonable yes ok and that ultimately it said if it was reasonable or it was going to defer to it and the fact that there was this can and didn't override it although i guess you're saying that it still gets some consideration in the not aware of a case where the proclaimed that i can and was used to take a language that was otherwise viewed as ambiguous and rendered unambiguous in favor of the veteran and i would i would  suggest that that use of it doesn't necessarily make sense because the v a is in a position where their interpretation ambiguous statutory phrases and they are you know the experts at doing so and they're empowered to do so and so they're looking at what are the consequences of the different interpretations that we give the statutory language and so i think it is much better in the first instance to give the v a the opportunity to take that into account when it's considering how to it said you know we find the plain meaning of this rule to be x oh and by the way this is the courts with the proclaimed can of but they didn't use it as the a tool of construction to take something they viewed as ambiguous so i think to apply must consider prozac corinthian and if that's where we find it applies and not in step two then did the hans court decide the statute with the ambiguous and does that bind us under those circumstances i suppose a pal decision would not know your honor but i do think that the court should take into account that the same panel in a request for rehearing noted that it would not have changed the result of their review both with something i haven't spent so fish an amount of time investigating to answer of course the question is we should ask for additional briefing and i think if the court was it was thinking about making a determination that hasa does not bind the panel because or because it didn't take into account the proclaim and can and when it made its determination right it's about its entire determination not specifically at step one of the chevron  feeling that mike come back but let me ask a related question which is my understanding of this can it be better than the origins of it is in this notion that this is a this is like a remedial statute and we want to all the other traditional tools of stuff like construction i think if you are looking at whether or not an agency has reasonably interpreted and they do a statutory phrase you have to look at whether the agency's view of it is proclaim and in some manner not in every instance i mean this court is already held in serious and just because it doesn't result in a better getting very very deeply putting my question in the context of and interpretations that an agency does and i'm wondering if if that's really you know necessarily the context it's really more a question of maybe the courts maybe the courts have to figure out what the meaning of a statutory term knows well i think that context what do we do how do we apply this so called liberal construction of remedial statutes there's a few different points of thought one is maybe there's a statute is not clear and there are a handful of reasonable option of  what is rather unclear statute and because of the remedial nature of the statute you want to give a little construction to it and so therefore we should select of the interpretation that most beneficial to the largest class of the parties that were intended to be you know benefited by the statute another way of looking at this doctrine is where the statute is not a career but it's close maybe it really gives the reaming in hard in one direction and it turns out that direction is benefit intended beneficiaries and so therefore we will put a cherry on top of this liberal construction doctrine and then confirm that that's in fact what the term perhaps unclear but almost clear term means is there what is the government's view on that understanding my view of the two ways you said are both reasonable except that the premise of the un is that it should be the court initially interpret ing what it is congress meant if congress's language was clear then there wouldn't be a question of what congress meant when it said these words it would be clear on its face where it's not what i meant when one term  what i would but even so let's move on but what i would suggest is that the court making a determination without the v a s input whatsoever on what is pro veteran is not necessarily the best use of that tool which is why i think the court used it to look at what the v a had done what it interpreted the statutory language because what may appear to be the provender in just a reading of a congressional phrase may not necessarily be  so and it is clear that where there is an ambiguity it is the agency has the power to fill gaps and interpret that and so you know i would suggest that although it is clearly clear that tools of statutory construction can be used on at chevron stuff one t to determine clear intent the the v a benefit you know the structure and statute are meant to be interpreted by whether vague meant to be interpreted by the v a and then reviewed by this court congress is has been clear when  the statute told the court to determine how to define in water ways but without that sort of clear indication that it should be up to the courts to define and otherwise ambiguous phrase the normal course which i  arena because you have to compare about what the intent was and what is the intent of that it's legislation as to take care of that part of the problem we've had is this was supposed to be a not have a serial system as a system not to provide provide these folks this benefit and to take a very liberal and reasonable approach when you talk about reasonableness let's talk about that for just a second i realize that's kind of getting a little into more advanced  but the whole basis of chevron the whole basis of sears the whole basis of the law is that the agency's approach has to be reasonable mr ruskin talking about the yaks work for one thing he has never brought forth and the v never brought forth is not in the record is any expert information to basically refute what we're saying we've brought into hydrologist we've brought in military officer we've brought in a number of people and all of the evidence now the preponderance not clear going fencing all of the other next goes on to the conclusion that these folks were exposed and veterans benefits legislation was set up to take care of people who'll expose one of the thing is it is it your view that just fine pilots that fly jet fighter pilots that fly over the land mass or the territorial waters would also be serving in the republic of vietnam now and i think we may have addressed that because there was b fifty two pilots for example that would come from guam fly over to an attack north vietnam thirty thousand feet  back you know certainly they would not have been exposed and certainly they would not have brought now if there was a jet pilot i guess if you will i want to thank white i mean this i'm now going back to your statutory interpretation question which you just talking out loud here why wouldn't a service member that was flying through the airspace also including the airspace of the republic of vietnam would be ok not democratic republic of vietnam up there but