Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/309/134/
Timestamp: 2019-04-18 10:24:44+00:00

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Justia › US Law › US Case Law › US Supreme Court › Volume 309 › FCC v. Pottsville Broadcasting Co.
1. A lower court's interpretation of its own mandate does not bind this Court. P. 309 U. S. 141.
2. The opinion discusses the differences of origin and function between the judicial and the administrative processes, and the relation of the one to the other in matters of substance and procedure where administrative rulings are subject to judicial review on errors of law. P. 309 U. S. 141.
3. Under the Federal Communications Act of 1934, the Communications Commission, in passing upon an application for a permit to construct a broadcasting station, must judge by the standard of public convenience, interest, and necessity. Pp. 309 U. S. 137, 309 U. S. 145.
4. The Act empowers the Commission to adopt rules of procedure applicable in ascertaining whether the granting of an application for a permit to erect a broadcasting station would be in the public interest. P. 309 U. S. 138.
5. Under this Act, upon review by the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia of a decision of the Commission denying an application for such a permit, the court has authority to correct errors of law and, upon remand, the Commission, is bound to accept such correction. P. 309 U. S. 145.
of Appeals was without authority by its mandate and by writ of mandamus to forbid this and to require a rehearing of the first application on the record as originally made. P. 309 U. S. 145.
70 App.D.C. 157; 105 F.2d 36, reversed.
Certiorari, 308 U.S. 535, to review an order which granted a writ of mandamus requiring the above-named Commission and its members (a) to set aside its order denying an application of the present respondent and assigning it for rehearing, with other applications for the same broadcasting facilities, and (b) to hear and reconsider the respondent's application on the basis of the record as originally made up when its application was first decided adversely by the Commission and brought before that court on appeal. See 98 F.2d 288.
of radio broadcasting in the Communications Act of 1934, c. 652, 48 Stat. 1064, as amended by the Act of May 20, 1937, c. 229, 50 Stat. 189, 47 U.S.C. § 151 et seq.
Adequate appreciation of the facts presently to be summarized requires that they be set in their legislative framework. In its essentials, the Communications Act of 1934 derives from the Federal Radio Act of 1927, c. 169, 44 Stat. 1162, as amended, 46 Stat. 844. By this Act, Congress, in order to protect the national interest involved in the new and far-reaching science of broadcasting, formulated a unified and comprehensive regulatory system for the industry. [Footnote 1] The common factors in the administration of the various statutes by which Congress had supervised the different modes of communication led to the creation, in the Act of 1934, of the Communications Commission. But the objectives of the legislation have remained substantially unaltered since 1927.
Against this background, the facts of the present case fall into proper perspective. In May, 1936, The Pottsville Broadcasting Company, respondent here, sought from the Commission a permit under § 319 Ibid., Title iii, for the construction of a broadcasting station at Pottsville, Pennsylvania. The Commission denied this application on two grounds: (1) that the respondent was financially disqualified, and (2) that the applicant did not sufficiently represent local interests in the community which the proposed station was to serve. From this denial of its application, respondent appealed to the court below. That tribunal withheld judgment on the second ground of the Commission's decision, for it did not deem this to have controlled the Commission's judgment. But, finding the Commission's conclusion regarding the respondent's lack of financial qualification to have been based on an erroneous understanding of Pennsylvania law, the Court of Appeals reversed the decision and ordered the "cause . . . remanded to the . . . Communications Commission for reconsideration in accordance with the views expressed." Pottsville Broadcasting Co. v.
Federal Communications Commission, 69 App.D.C. 7, 98 F.2d 288.
Following this remand, respondent petitioned the Commission to grant its original application. Instead of doing so, the Commission set for argument respondent's application along with two rival applications for the same facilities. The latter applications had been filed subsequently to that of respondent, and hearings had been held on them by the Commission in a consolidated proceeding, but they were still undisposed of when the respondent's case returned to the Commission. With three applications for the same facilities thus before it, and the facts regarding each having theretofore been explored by appropriate procedure, the Commission directed that all three be set down for argument before it to determine which, "on a comparative basis," "in the judgment of the Commission, will best serve public interest." At this stage of the proceedings, respondents sought and obtained from the Court of Appeals the writ of mandamus now under review. That writ commanded the Commission to set aside its order designating respondent's application "for hearing on a comparative basis" with the other two, and "to hear and reconsider the application" of The Pottsville Broadcasting Company "on the basis of the record as originally made and in accordance with the opinions" of the Court of Appeals in the original review (69 App.D.C. 7, 98 F.2d 288), and in the mandamus proceedings. Pottsville Broadcasting Co. v. Federal Communications Commission, 70 App.D.C. 157, 105 F.2d 36.
what issues were laid at rest. Compare Sprague v. Ticonic Bank, 307 U. S. 161. Nor is a court's interpretation of the scope of its own mandate necessarily conclusive. To be sure the court that issues a mandate is normally the best judge of its content, on the general theory that the author of a document is ordinarily the authoritative interpreter of its purposes. But it is not even true that a lower court's interpretation of its mandate is controlling here. Compare United States v. Morgan, 307 U. S. 183. Therefore, we would not be foreclosed by the interpretation which the Court of Appeals gave to its mandate, even if it had been directed to a lower court.
A much deeper issue, however, is here involved. This was not a mandate from court to court, but from a court to an administrative agency. What is in issue is not the relationship of federal courts inter se -- a relationship defined largely by the courts themselves -- but the due observance by courts of the distribution of authority made by Congress as between its power to regulate commerce and the reviewing power which it has conferred upon the courts under Article III of the Constitution. A review by a federal court of the action of a lower court is only one phase of a single unified process. But, to the extent that a federal court is authorized to review an administrative act, there is superimposed upon the enforcement of legislative policy through administrative control a different process from that out of which the administrative action under review ensued. The technical rules derived from the interrelationship of judicial tribunals forming a hierarchical system are taken out of their environment when mechanically applied to determine the extent to which Congressional power, exercised through a delegated agency, can be controlled within the limited scope of "judicial power" conferred by Congress under the Constitution.
parties be afforded an opportunity for hearing, and that judgment must express a reasoned conclusion. But to assimilate the relation of these administrative bodies and the courts to the relationship between lower and upper courts is to disregard the origin and purposes of the movement for administrative regulation and, at the same time, to disregard the traditional scope, however far-reaching, of the judicial process. Unless these vital differentiations between the functions of judicial and administrative tribunals are observed, courts will stray outside their province and read the laws of Congress through the distorting lenses of inapplicable legal doctrine.
Under the Radio Act of 1927 as originally passed, the Court of Appeals was authorized in reviewing action of the Radio Commission, to "alter or revise the decision appealed from and enter such judgment as to it may seem just." § 16 of the Radio Act of 1927, 44 Stat. 1169. Thereby the Court of Appeals was constituted "a superior and revising agency in the same field" as that in which the Radio Commission acted. Federal Radio Comm'n v. General Electric Co., 281 U. S. 464, 281 U. S. 467. Since the power thus given was administrative, rather than judicial, the appellate jurisdiction of this Court could not be invoked. Federal Radio Comm'n v. General Electric Co., supra. To lay the basis for review here, Congress amended § 16 so as to terminate the administrative oversight of the Court of Appeals. C. 788, 46 Stat. 844. In "sharp contrast with the previous grant of authority," the court was restricted to a purely judicial review.
Federal Radio Comm'n v. Nelson Bros. Co., 289 U. S. 266, 289 U. S. 276.
On review, the court may thus correct errors of law, and, on remand, the Commission is bound to act upon the correction. Federal Power Comm'n v. Pacific Co., 307 U. S. 156. But an administrative determination in which is imbedded a legal question open to judicial review does not impliedly foreclose the administrative agency, after its error has been corrected, from enforcing the legislative policy committed to its charge. Cf. Ford Motor Co. v. Labor Board, 305 U. S. 364.
would be decisive factors in determining which of several pending applications was to be granted.
It is, however, urged upon us that, if all matters of administrative discretion remain open for determination on remand after reversal, a succession of single determinations upon single legal issues is possible, with resulting delay and hardship to the applicant. It is always easy to conjure up extreme and even oppressive possibilities in the exertion of authority. But courts are not charged with general guardianship against all potential mischief in the complicated tasks of government. The present case makes timely the reminder that "legislatures are ultimate guardians of the liberties and welfare of the people in quite as great a degree as the courts." Missouri, Kansas & Texas Ry. Co. v. May, 194 U. S. 267, 194 U. S. 270. Congress, which creates and sustains these agencies, must be trusted to correct whatever defects experience may reveal. Interference by the courts is not conducive to the development of habits of responsibility in administrative agencies. Anglo-American courts as we now know them are themselves in no small measure the product of a historic process.
The judgment is reversed, with directions to dissolve the writ of mandamus and to dismiss respondent's petition.
For the legislative history of the Act of 1927, see H.Rep. No. 464, S.Rep. No. 772, 69th Cong., 1st Sess.; 67 Cong.Rec. 5473-5504, 5555-86; 5645-47; 12335-59; 12480, 12497-12508, 12614-18; 68 Cong.Rec. 2556-80, 2750-51, 2869-82, 3025-39, 3117-34, 3257-62, 3329-36, 3569-71, 4109-55. A summary of the operation of previous regulatory laws may be found in Herring and Gross, Telecommunications, pp. 239-245.
Since the beginning of regulation under the Act of 1927, comparative considerations have governed the application of standards of "public convenience, interest, or necessity" laid down by the law.
". . . the commission desires to point out that the test -- 'public interest, convenience, or necessity' -- becomes a matter of a comparative, and not an absolute, standard when applied to broadcasting stations. Since the number of channels is limited, and the number of persons desiring to broadcast is far greater than can be accommodated, the commission must determine from among the applicants before it which of them will, if licensed, best serve the public. In a measure, perhaps, all of them give more or less service. Those who give the least, however, must be sacrificed for those who give the most. The emphasis must be first and foremost on the interest, the convenience, and the necessity of the listening public, and not on the interest, convenience, or necessity of the individual broadcaster, or the advertiser."
Second Annual Report, Federal Radio Commission, 1928, pp. 169, 170.
See Maitland, The Constitutional History of England, pp. 415-18; Landis, The Administrative Process, passim.
"There is one special field of law development which has manifestly become inevitable. We are entering upon the creation of a body of administrative law quite different in its machinery, its remedies, and its necessary safeguards from the old methods of regulation by specific statutes enforced by the courts. . . . There will be no withdrawal from these experiments. . . . We shall go on; we shall expand them, whether we approve theoretically or not, because such agencies furnish protection to rights and obstacles to wrong doing which under our new social and industrial conditions cannot be practically accomplished by the old and simple procedure of legislatures and courts as in the last generation."
See United States v. Lowden, 308 U. S. 225; Herring, Public Administration and the Public Interest, passim.
"the Commission will, so far as practicable, endeavor to fix the same date . . . for hearing on all applications which . . . present conflicting claims . . . excepting, however, applications filed after any such application has been designated for hearing."
Respondent contends, and the court below seemed to believe that this rule bound the Commission to give respondent a noncomparative consideration because its application had been set down for hearing before the later and rival applications were filed. The Commission interprets this rule simply as governing the order in which applications shall be heard, and not touching upon the order in which they shall be acted upon or the manner in which they shall be considered. That interpretation is binding upon the courts. American Tel. & Tel. Co. v. United States, 299 U. S. 232.

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