Source: http://supreme.nolo.com/us/321/414/case.html
Timestamp: 2019-09-22 22:48:49
Document Index: 329883248

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 203', '§ 203', '§ 1300', '§ 203', '§ 6', '§ 203', '§ 203']

YAKUS V. UNITED STATES, 321 U. S. 414 - Volume 321 - 1944 - Full Text - US Supreme Court Center - USSC Cases - Nolo
US Supreme Court Center > Volume 321 > YAKUS V. UNITED STATES, 321 U. S. 414 (1944) > Full Text
The Act is thus an exercise by Congress of its legislative power. In it, Congress has stated the legislative objective, has prescribed the method of achieving that objective -- maximum price-fixing -- and has laid down standards to guide the administrative determination of both the occasions for the exercise of the price-fixing power, and the particular prices to be established. Compare Field v. Clark, 143 U. S. 649; Hampton & Co. v. United States, 276
Currin v. Wallace, supra, 306 U. S. 15. Hence, it is irrelevant that Congress might itself have prescribed the maximum prices or have provided a more rigid standard by which they are to be fixed; for example, that all prices should be frozen at the levels obtaining during a certain period or on a certain date. See Union Bridge Co. v. United States, 204 U. S. 364, 204 U. S. 386. Congress is not confined
to that method of executing its policy which involves the least possible delegation of discretion to administrative officers. Compare 17 U. S. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316, 17 U. S. 413 et seq. It is free to avoid the rigidity of such a system, which might well result in serious hardship, and to choose instead the flexibility attainable by the use of less restrictive standards. Cf. Hampton & Co. v. United States, supra, 276 U. S. 408, 276 U. S. 409. Only if we could say that there is an absence of standards for the guidance of the Administrator's action, so that it would be impossible in a proper proceeding to ascertain whether the will of Congress has been obeyed, would we be justified in overriding its choice of means for effecting its declared purpose of preventing inflation.
The standards prescribed by the present Act, with the aid of the "statement of considerations" required to be made by the Administrator, are sufficiently definite and precise to enable Congress, the courts and the public to ascertain whether the Administrator, in fixing the designated prices, has conformed to those standards. Compare Hirabayashi v. United States, supra, 320 U. S. 104. Hence, we are unable to find in them an unauthorized delegation of legislative power. The authority to fix prices only when prices have risen or threaten to rise to an extent or in a manner inconsistent with the purpose of the Act to prevent inflation is no broader than the authority to fix maximum prices when deemed necessary to protect consumers against unreasonably high prices, sustained in Sunshine Anthracite Coal Co. v. Adkins, supra, or the authority to take possession of and operate telegraph lines whenever deemed necessary for the national security or defense, upheld in Dakota Central Tel. Co. v. South Dakota, 250 U. S. 163; or the authority to suspend tariff provisions upon findings that the duties imposed by a foreign state are "reciprocally unequal and unreasonable," held valid in Field v. Clark, supra.
For the purposes of this case, in passing upon the sufficiency of the procedure on protest to the Administrator and complaint to the Emergency Court, it is irrelevant to suggest that the Administrator or the Court has in the past or may in the future deny due process. Action taken by them is reviewable in this Court, and, if contrary to due process, will be corrected here. Hence, we have no occasion to pass upon determinations of the Administrator or the Emergency Court, said to violate due process, which have never been brought here for review, and obviously we cannot pass upon action which might have been taken on a protest by petitioners, who have never made a protest or in any way sought the remedy Congress has provided. In the absence of any proceeding before the Administrator, we cannot assume that he would fail in the performance of any duty imposed on him by the Constitution and laws of the United States, or that he would deny due process to petitioners by "loading the record against them" or denying such hearing as the Constitution prescribes. Plymouth Coal Co. v. Pennsylvania, 232 U. S. 531, 232 U. S. 545; Hall
v. Geiger-Jones Co., 242 U. S. 539, 242 U. S. 554; Minnesota v. Probate Court, 309 U. S. 270, 309 U. S. 277, and cases cited. Only if we could say in advance of resort to the statutory procedure that it is incapable of affording due process to petitioners could we conclude that they have shown any legal excuse for their failure to resort to it or that their constitutional rights have been or will be infringed. Natural Gas Co. v. Slattery, 302 U. S. 300, 302 U. S. 309; Anniston Mfg. Co. v. Davis, supra, 301 U. S. 356-357; Minnesota v. Probate Court, supra, 309 U. S. 275, 309 U. S. 277. But, upon a full examination of the provisions of the statute, it is evident that the authorized procedure is not incapable of affording the protection to petitioners' rights required by due process.
The sixty days' period allowed for protest of the Administrator's regulations cannot be said to be unreasonably short in view of the urgency and exigencies of wartime price regulation. [Footnote 3] Here, the Administrator is required to act initially upon the protest within thirty days after it is filed or ninety days after promulgation of the challenged regulation, by allowing the protest wholly or in part, or denying it or setting it down for hearing. (§ 203(a).)
Nor can we say that the administrative hearing provided by the statute will prove inadequate. We hold in Bowles v. Willingham, post, p. 321 U. S. 503, that, in the circumstances to which this Act was intended to apply, the failure to afford a hearing prior to the issue of a price regulation does not offend against due process. While the hearing on a protest may be restricted to the presentation of documentary evidence, affidavits and briefs, the Act contemplates, and the Administrator's regulations provide for, a full oral hearing upon a showing that written evidence and briefs "will not permit the fair and expeditious disposition of the protest." (§ 203(a); Revised Procedural Regulation No. 1, § 1300.39, 7 Fed.Reg. 891.) In advance of application to the Administrator for such a hearing, we cannot well say whether its denial in any particular case would be a denial of due process. The Act requires the Administrator to inform the protestant of the grounds for his decision denying a protest, including all matters of which he has taken official notice. (§ 203(a).) In view of the provisions for the introduction of further evidence both before and after the Administrator has announced his determination, we cannot say that, if petitioners had filed a protest adequate
But where an injunction is asked which will adversely affect a public interest for whose impairment, even temporarily, an injunction bond cannot compensate, the court may, in the public interest, withhold relief until a final determination of the rights of the parties, though the postponement may be burdensome to the plaintiff. [Footnote 7] Virginian
Ry. Co. v. United States, 272 U. S. 658, 272 U. S. 672-673; Petroleum Exploration Co. v. Public Service Comm'n, 304 U. S. 209, 304 U. S. 222-223; Dryfoos v. Edwards, 284 F. 596, 603, affirmed, 251 U. S. 251 U.S. 146; see Beaumont, S. L. & W. Ry. Co. v. United States, 282 U. S. 74, 282 U. S. 91, 282 U. S. 92. Compare Wisconsin v. Illinois, 278 U. S. 367, 278 U. S. 418-421. This is but another application of the principle, declared in Virginian Ry. Co. v. System Federation, 300 U. S. 515, 300 U. S. 552, that
Our decisions leave no doubt that, when justified by compelling public interest, the legislature may authorize summary action subject to later judicial review of its validity. It may insist on the immediate collection of taxes. Phillips v. Commissioner, 283 U. S. 589, 283 U. S. 595-597 and cases cited. It may take possession of property presumptively abandoned by its owner, prior to determination of
No procedural principle is more familiar to this Court than that a constitutional right may be forfeited in criminal, as well as civil, cases by the failure to make timely assertion of the right before a tribunal having jurisdiction to determine it. O'Neil v. Vermont, 144 U. S. 323, 144 U. S. 331; Barbour v. Georgia, 249 U. S. 454, 249 U. S. 460; Whitney v. California, 274 U. S. 357, 274 U. S. 360, 274 U. S. 362, 274 U. S. 380. Courts may, for that reason, refuse to consider a constitutional objection even though a like objection had previously been sustained in a case in which it was properly taken. Seaboard Air Line Ry. Co. v. Watson, 287 U. S. 86. While this Court, in its
For more than fifty years, it has been a penal offense for shippers and interstate rail carriers to fail to observe the duly filed tariffs fixing freight rates -- including, since 1906, rates prescribed by the Commission -- even though the validity of those rates is open to attack only in a separate administrative proceeding before the Interstate Commerce Commission. 49 U.S.C. §§ 6(7), 10(1); Armour Packing Co. v. United States, 209 U. S. 56, 209 U. S. 81; United States v. Adams Express Co., 229 U. S. 381, 229 U. S. 388. It is no defense to a prosecution for departure from a rate fixed by the filed tariffs that the rate is unreasonable or otherwise unlawful where its infirmity has not first been established by an independent proceeding before the Interstate Commerce Commission, and the denial of the defense in such a case does not violate any provision of the Constitution. United States v. Vacuum Oil Co., 158 F. 536, 539-541; Lehigh Valley R. Co. v. United States, 188 F. 879, 887-888. See also United States v. Standard Oil Co., 155 F. 305, 309-310, reversed on other grounds, 164 F. 376. Compare Pennsylvania R. Co. v. International Coal Co., 230 U. S. 184, 230 U. S. 196-197; Arizona Grocery Co. v. Atchison, T. & S.F. Ry. Co., 284 U. S. 370, 24 U. S. 384. Similarly, it has been held that one who has failed to avail himself of the statutory method of review of orders of the Secretary of Agriculture under the Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921, or of the Federal Radio Commission under the Radio Act of 1927, cannot enjoin threatened prosecutions for violation of those orders, United States v. Corrick, 298 U. S. 435, 298 U. S. 440;
In the exercise of the equity jurisdiction of the Emergency Court of Appeals to test the validity of a price regulation, a jury trial is not mandatory under the Seventh Amendment. Cf. Block v. Hirsh, supra, 256 U. S. 158. Nor has there been any denial in the present criminal proceeding of the right, guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment, to a trial by a jury of the state and district where the crime was committed. Subject to the requirements of due process, which are here satisfied, Congress could make criminal the violation of a price regulation. The indictment charged a violation of the regulation in the district of trial, and the question whether petitioners had committed the crime thus charged in the indictment and defined by Congress, namely, whether they had violated the statute by willful disobedience of a price regulation promulgated by the
The use of the March 16-28, 1942, base period is explained by the fact that wholesale meat prices had already been stabilized at approximately that level by Maximum Price Regulation No. 169 as originally issued on June 19, 1942, 7 Fed.Reg. 4653, and by the General Maximum Price Regulation, issued April 28, 1942, 7 Fed.Reg. 3153, which forbade the sale of most commodities at prices in excess of the highest price charged by the seller during March, 1942. The Statement of Considerations accompanying the latter, 2 C.C.H. War Law Service -- Price Control, � 42,081, explains in some detail the considerations impelling the Administrator to the conclusion that stabilization at the levels obtaining in March, 1942, would be fair and equitable, and would effectuate the purposes of the Act; it considers the price levels prevailing during October 1-15, 1941, and gives reasons why price stabilization at those levels would not be practicable. The Statement of Considerations accompanying Maximum Price Regulation No. 169 as originally issued, 2 C.C.H. War Law Service -- Price Control, � 43,369A, refers to this discussion in explanation of the continuance of the use of March, 1942, levels as a base.
Judged by normal peacetime standards, over-all nationwide price control hardly has accepted place in our institutions. Notwithstanding the considerable expansion of recent years in this respect, the extension has been piecemeal. [Footnote 3/1] Until now, it has not enveloped the entire economy. [Footnote 3/2] Whether control so extensive might be upheld in some emergency not created by war need not now be decided.
As it is with the substantive control, so it is with delegating legislative power. War begets necessities for this, as for imposing substantive controls, not required by the lesser exigencies of more normal periods. In this respect, certainly there is as much room for difference as exists when Congress is dealing wholly with internal matters and when it is acting with the President about foreign affairs. Cf. United States v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corp., 299 U. S. 304. Not only the broader power of Congress, but its conjunction in the particular delegation with the wider authority of the President, both as chief magistrate and as commander-in-chief, goes to sustain the greater delegation. Cf. Hirabayashi v. United States, supra. But the present legislation, as the Court's opinion demonstrates,
Disparity in remedial and penal measures does not necessarily invalidate the procedure, though it has relevance to adequacy of the remedy allowed the individual. [Footnote 3/9] Congress has broad discretion to open and close the doors to litigation. In doing so, it may take account of the necessities presented by such a situation as it was dealing with here. To follow the usual course of legislation and permit challenge by restraining orders, injunctions, stay orders and the normal processes of litigation would have been, in this case, to lock the barn door after the horse had been stolen. There was therefore compelling reason for Congress to balance the scales of litigation unevenly, if only it did not go too far. In no other way could it protect the paramount national interest. If the result, within the permissible limits, is harsh or inconvenient for
Congress, however, was not content to create a single national tribunal, give it exclusive jurisdiction to determine all cases arising under the statute, and deny jurisdiction over them to all other courts. [Footnote 3/11] It provided for enforcement
This, too, it could do, though only if adequate proceedings, in the constitutional sense, were authorized. And I agree that the enforcing jurisdiction would not be made inadequate merely by the fact that no stay order or other relief could be had pending the outcome of litigation. Confronted as the nation was with the imminent danger of inflation, and therefore the necessity that price controls should become effective at once and continue so without interruption at least until invalidated in particular instances, Congress could require individuals to sustain, in deference to the paramount public interest, whatever harm might ensue during the period of litigation and until each had demonstrated the invalidity of the regulation as it affected himself. [Footnote 3/12] Runaway inflation could not have been avoided in any other way. The lid had to go on, go on tight, and stay tight. This necessity united with the general presumption of validity which attaches to legislation [Footnote 3/13] and Congress' power to control the jurisdiction of the courts to sustain its denial of power to all courts, including the enforcing courts, the Emergency Court and this one, [Footnote 3/14] to suspend operation of the regulations pending final determination of validity.
But such instances of foreclosure, whether legislative or judicial in origin, do not support the broader basis of argument in this case. Two things are to be emphasized. One is that the previous opportunity is in an earlier phase of the same proceeding, not, as here, a separate and independent one of wholly different character. In other words, the determination of guilt or other matter ultimately in issue is not cut up into two separate, distinct and independent proceedings in different tribunals, in which neither body has power to consider and decide all the issues, but each can determine them only in part. The other thing for stress is that the foreclosure by failure to take the earlier chance is not universally effective. And this is true particularly of constitutional questions, some of which may be raised at any time. [Footnote 3/23] While Congress has plenary power to confer
If the foreclosure is not always effective when the earlier phase of litigation is wholly judicial, it hardly should be when this consists of administrative or of both administrative and judicial proceedings, still less when these are civil in character and the later enforcement phase is criminal. In the enforcement of administrative orders, the courts have been assiduous, perhaps at times extremely so, [Footnote 3/24] to see that constitutional protections to the persons affected are observed. By trial and error, ways have been found to give the administrative process scope for effective action and yet to maintain individual security against abuse, especially in respect to constitutional rights. [Footnote 3/25] The instances closest to the problem here have provided for attaching penalties, including criminal sanctions, to violations of orders. But generally, by one method or another, means have been supplied for postponing their impact, at any rate irrevocably, until after the order's validity has
Whatever may be the limitations on judicial review in criminal proceedings under other administrative enforcement patterns, [Footnote 3/28] no one of these arrangements goes as far as the combination presented by this Act. It restricts the individual's right to review to the protest procedure and appeal through the Emergency Court of Appeals Both are short-cut proceedings, trimmed almost to the bone of due process, even for wholly civil purposes, and pared down further by a short statute of limitations. Protest must be filed within the sixty-day period. After that time, no protest can be made, and no review can be
had, except upon grounds arising later. § 203(a). [Footnote 3/29] The only right is to submit written evidence and argument to the administrator. § 203(c). There is none to present additional evidence to the court. [Footnote 3/30] Necessarily, there is none of cross-examination. No court can suspend the order unless or until a judgment of the Emergency Court invalidating it becomes final. [Footnote 3/31] The penalties, civil and criminal, attach at once on violation and, it would seem, until the contrary is decided, with finality. [Footnote 3/32] At any rate,
This is the scope and reach of the statute. It is greater than any this Court heretofore has sustained. [Footnote 3/33] It places
By these provisions, the purpose hardly is to be supposed to authorize splitting up a criminal trial into separate segments, with some of the issues essential to guilt triable before one court in the state and district where the crime was committed and others, equally essential, triable in another court in a highly summary civil proceeding held elsewhere, or to dispense with trial on them because that proceeding has not been followed. [Footnote 3/34] If the validity of the
A procedure so piecemeal, so chopped up, so disruptive of constitutional guaranties in relation to trials for crime, should not, and, in my judgment, cannot be validated as to such proceedings, under the Constitution. Even war does not suspend the protections which are inherently part and parcel of our criminal process. Such a dissection of the trial for crime could be supported, under our system, only upon some such notions as waiver and estoppel or res judicata, whether or not embodied in legislation. [Footnote 3/36] These too are strange and inadequate vehicles for trying whether the citizen has been guilty of criminal conduct. They bar defense, while keeping prosecution open, before it begins.
The procedural pattern is one which may be adapted to the trial of almost any crime. Once approved, it is bound to spawn progeny. If, in one case, Congress thus can withdraw from the criminal court the power to consider the validity of the regulations on which the charge is based, it can do so for other cases, unless limitations are pointed out clearly and specifically. And it can do so for statutes, as well. In short, the way will have been found to avoid, if not altogether the power of the courts to review legislation for consistency with the Constitution, [Footnote 3/39] then, in part, at least, their obligation to observe its commands, and, more especially, the guaranteed protections of persons charged with crime in the trial of their causes. This is not merely control or definition of jurisdiction. It
With the arsenal of other valid legal weapons available, there can be no lack of speedy and effective measures to secure compliance. The regulations are effective until invalidated. They cannot be suspended by any court pending final decision here, if the last source of relief is sought. All the armory of equity, and with it the sanctions of contempt, are available to keep the regulations in force and to prevent violations, at least until decision here is sought and had that the regulations are invalid. The same weapons are available to enforce them permanently if they are found valid. Apart from defense when charged with crime, the individual's only avenue of escape, and that not until final decision of invalidity has been made, is by protest and appeal through the single route prescribed. Finally, in addition to all this, the dealer may be punished for crime if he violates the regulation willfully and cannot show it is invalid either in his defense or by securing a judgment to this effect through the protest procedure. In either case, in view of the statute's curtailment of his substantive rights and the consequent increase in the burden of proving facts sufficient to nullify the regulation, [Footnote 3/40] his chance for escape
Different considerations, in part at any rate, apply in civil proceedings. [Footnote 3/41] But, for the trial of crimes, no procedure
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