Source: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/491/440
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Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 2', '§ 2', '§ 2', '§ 9', '§ 10', '§ 10', '§ 10', '§ 10', '§ 10', '§ 5', '§ 14', '§ 2', '§ 3', '§ 3', '§ 4', '§ 101', '§ 6', '§ 1', '§ 2', '§ 3']

PUBLIC CITIZEN, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE et al. WASHINGTON LEGAL FOUNDATION, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE et al. | Supreme Court | LII / Legal Information Institute
Supreme Court aboutsearch liibulletin subscribe previews PUBLIC CITIZEN, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE et al. WASHINGTON LEGAL FOUNDATION, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE et al.
491 U.S. 440 (109 S.Ct. 2558, 105 L.Ed.2d 377)
Argued: April 17, 1989.
[HTML] Syllabus To aid the President in fulfilling his constitutional duty to appoint federal judges, the Department of Justice regularly seeks advice from the Standing Committee on Federal Judiciary of the American Bar Association (ABA) regarding potential nominees for judgeships. The ABA Committee's investigations, reports, and votes on potential nominees are kept confidential, although its rating of a particular candidate is made public if he or she is in fact nominated. Appellant Washington Legal Foundation (WLF) filed suit against the Justice Department after the ABA Committee refused WLF's request for the names of potential nominees it was considering and for its reports and minutes of its meetings. The action was brought under the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), which, among other things, defines an "advisory committee" as any group "established or utilized" by the President or an agency to give advice on public questions, and requires a covered group to file a charter, afford notice of its meetings, open those meetings to the public, and make its minutes, records, and reports available to the public. Joined by appellant Public Citizen, WLF asked the District Court to declare the Committee an "advisory group" subject to FACA's requirements and to enjoin the Department from utilizing the ABA Committee until it complied with those requirements. The court dismissed the complaint, holding that the Department's use of the ABA Committee is subject to FACA's strictures, but ruling that applying FACA to the ABA Committee would unconstitutionally infringe on the President's Article II power to nominate federal judges and violate the doctrine of separation of powers.
Held: 1. Appellants have standing to bring this suit. The refusal to permit them to scrutinize the ABA Committee's activities to the extent FACA allows constitutes a sufficiently distinct injury to provide standing, and the fact that other groups or citizens might make the same complaint as appellants does not lessen that injury. Moreover, although the tatute's disclosure exemptions might bar public access to many of the meetings appellants seek to attend and many of the documents they wish to view, the exemptions probably would not deny access to all meetings and documents, particularly discussions and documents regarding the ABA Committee's overall functioning, and would not excuse the ABA Committee's noncompliance with FACA's other provisions, such as those requiring a covered organization to file a charter and give notice of its meetings. Thus, appellants may gain significant and genuine relief if they prevail in their suit, and such potential gains are sufficient to give them standing. Pp. 448-451.
(a) Whether the ABA Committee is an "advisory committee" under FACA depends upon whether it is "utilized" by the President or the Department within the statute's meaning. Read unqualifiedly, that verb would extend FACA's coverage to the ABA Committee. However, since FACA was enacted to cure specific ills particularly the wasteful expenditure of public funds for worthless committee meetings and biased proposals by special interest groupsit is unlikely that Congress intended the statute to cover every formal and informal consultation between the President or an Executive agency and a group rendering advice. When the literal reading of a statutory term compels an odd result, this Court searches beyond the bare text for other evidence of congressional intent. Pp. 451-455.
(b) Although the question is a close one, a careful review of the regulatory scheme prior to FACA's enactment and that statute's legislative history strongly suggests that Congress did not intend that the term "utilized" apply to the Justice Department's use of the ABA Committee. FACA's regulatory predecessor, Executive Order No. 11007, applied to advisory committees formed by a governmental unit and to those not so formed when "being utilized by the Government in the same manner as a Government-formed . . . committee." That the ABA Committee was never deemed to be "utilized" in the relevant sense is evidenced by the fact that no President operating under the Order or any Justice Department official ever applied the Order to the ABA Committee, despite its highly visible role in advising the Department as to potential nominees. That is not surprising, since the ABA Committeewhich was formed privately, rather than at the Government's prompting, to assist the President in performing a constitutionally specified function, and which receives no federal funds and is not amenable to the strict management by agency officials envisaged by the Ordercannot easily be said to have been "utilized" in the same manner as a Government-formed committee. Moreover, FACA adopted many of the Order's provisions, and there is considerable evidence in the statute's legislative history that Congress sought only to achieve compliance with FACA's more stringent requirements by advisory committees already covered by the Order and by Presidential advisory committees, and that the statute's "or utilized" phrase was intended to clarify that FACA applies to committees "established . . . by" the Government in a generous sense of that term, encompassing groups formed indirectly by quasi-public organizations "for" public agencies as well as "by" such agencies themselves. Read in this way, the word "utilized" does not describe the Justice Department's use of the ABA Committee. Pp. 455-465.
If the Justice Department does request a formal report, the committee representative prepares a draft and sends copies to other members of the ABA Committee, together with relevant materials. A vote is then taken and a final report approved. The ABA Committee conveys its ratingthough not its final reportin confidence to the Department of Justice, accompanied by a statement whether its rating was supported by all committee members, or whether it only commanded a majority or substantial majority of the ABA Committee. After considering the rating and other information the President and his advisers have assembled, including a report by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and additional interviews conducted by the President's judicial selection committee, the President then decides whether to nominate the candidate. If the candidate is in fact nominated, the ABA Committee's rating, but not its report, is made public at the request of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
FACA was born of a desire to assess the need for the "numerous committees, boards, commissions, councils, and similar groups which have been established to advise officers and agencies in the executive branch of the Federal Government." § 2(a), as set forth in 5 U.S.C.App. § 2(a).
Its purpose was to ensure that new advisory committees be established only when essential and that their number be minimized; that they be terminated when they have outlived their usefulness; that their creation, operation, and duration be subject to uniform standards and procedures; that Congress and the public remain apprised of their existence, activities, and cost; and that their work be exclusively advisory in nature. § 2(b).
To attain these objectives, FACA directs the Director of the Office of Management and Budget and agency heads to establish various administrative guidelines and management controls for advisory committees. It also imposes a number of requirements on advisory groups. For example, FACA requires that each advisory committee file a charter, § 9(c) and keep detailed minutes of its meetings. § 10(c). Those meetings must be chaired o attended by an officer or employee of the Federal Government who is authorized to adjourn any meeting when he or she deems its adjournment in the public interest. § 10(e). FACA also requires advisory committees to provide advance notice of their meetings and to open them to the public, § 10(a), unless the President or the agency head to which an advisory committee reports determines that it may be closed to the public in accordance with the Government in the Sunshine Act, 5 U.S.C. 552b(c). § 10(d). In addition, FACA stipulates that advisory committee minutes, records, and reports be made available to the public, provided they do not fall within one of the Freedom of Information Act's exemptions, see 5 U.S.C. 552, and the Government does not choose to withhold them. § 10(b). Advisory committees established by legislation or created by the President or other federal officials must also be "fairly balanced in terms of the points of view represented and the functions" they perform. §§ 5(b)(2), (c). Their existence is limited to two years, unless specifically exempted by the entity establishing them. § 14(a)(1).
WLF asked the District Court for the District of Columbia to declare the ABA Committee an "advisory committee" as FACA defines that term. WLF further sought an injunction ordering the Justice Department to cease utilizing the ABA Committee as an advisory committee until it complied with FACA. In particular, WLF contended that the ABA Committee must file a charter, afford notice of its meetings, open those meetings to the public, and make its minutes, records, and reports available for public inspection and copying. See WLF Complaint, App. 5-11. The Justice Department moved to dismiss, arguing that the ABA Committee did not fall within FACA's definition of "advisory committee" and that, if it did, FACA would violate the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers.
Appellee's challenge is twofold. First, it contends that neither appellant has alleged injury sufficiently concrete and specific to confer standing; rather, appellee maintains, they have advanced a general grievance shared in substantially equal measure by all or a large class of citizens, and thus lack standing under our precedents. Brief for Appellee ABA 12-15. Second, appellee argues that even if appellants have asserted a sufficiently discrete injury, they have not demonstrated that a decision in their favor would likely redress the alleged harm, because the meetings they seek to attend and the minutes and records they wish to review would probably be closed to them under FACA. Hence, the American Bar Association submits, Article III bars their suit. Id., at 15-17.
Indeed, it is difficult to square appellee's assertion that appellants cannot hope to gain noteworthy relief with its contention that "even more significant interference than participation of Government officials in the ABA Committee's affairs would result from the potential application of the 'public inspection' provisions of Section 10 of the Act." Brief for Appellee ABA 36. The American Bar Association explains: "Disclosure and public access are the rule under FACA; the exemptions generally are construed narrowly. In fact, the Government-in-the-Sunshine Act has no deliberative process privilege under which ABA Committee meetings could be closed." Id., at 38-39 (citations omitted). Appellee therefore concludes: "At bottom, there can be no question that application of FACA will impair the sensitive and necessarily confidential process of gathering information to assess accurately the qualifications and character of prospective judicial nominees." Id., at 39. Whatever the merits of these claims and whatever their relevance to appellee's constitutional objections to FACA's applicability, they certainly show, as appellants contend, that appellants might gain significant relief if they prevail in their suit. Appellants' potential gains are undoubtedly sufficient to give them standing.
"For the purpose of this Act
"(2) The term 'advisory committee' means any committee, board, commission, council, conference, panel, task force, or other similar group, or any subcommittee or other subgroup thereof (hereafter in this paragraph referred to as 'committee'), which is
* There is no doubt that the Executive makes use of the ABA Committee, and thus "utilizes" it in one common sense of the term. As the District Court recognized, however, "reliance on the plain language of FACA alone is not entirely satisfactory." 691 F.Supp., at 488. "Utilize" is a woolly verb, its contours left undefined by the statute itself. Read unqualifiedly, i would extend FACA's requirements to any group of two or more persons, or at least any formal organization, from which the President or an Executive agency seeks advice.
We are convinced that Congress did not intend that result. A nodding acquaintance with FACA's purposes, as manifested by its legislative history and as recited in § 2 of the Act, reveals that it cannot have been Congress' intention, for example, to require the filing of a charter, the presence of a controlling federal official, and detailed minutes any time the President seeks the views of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) before nominating Commissioners to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, or asks the leaders of an American Legion Post he is visiting for the organization's opinion on some aspect of military policy.
Nor can Congress have meantas a straightforward reading of "utilize" would appear to requirethat all of FACA's restrictions apply if a President consults with his own political party before picking his Cabinet. It was unmistakably not Congress' intention to intrude on a political party's freedom to conduct its affairs as it chooses, cf. Eu v. San Francisco County Democratic Central Comm., 489 U.S. 214, 230, 109 S.Ct. 1013, 1024, 103 L.Ed.2d 271 (1989), or its ability to advise elected officials who belong to that party, by placing a federal employee in charge of each advisory group meeting and making its minutes public property. FACA was enacted to cure specific ills, above all the wasteful expenditure of public funds for worthless committee meetings and biased proposals; although its reach is extensive, we cannot believe that it was intended to cover every formal and informal consultation between the President or an Executive agency and a group rendering advice.
As we said in Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States, 143 U.S. 457, 459, 12 S.Ct. 511, 512, 36 L.Ed. 226 (1892): "Frequently words of general meaning are used in a statute, words broad enough to include an act in question, and yet a consideration of the whole legislation, or of the circumstances surrounding its enactment, or of the absurd results which follow from giving such broad meaning to the words, makes it unreasonable to believe that the legislator intended to include the particular act."
In 1950, the Justice Department issued guidelines for the operation of federal advisory committees in order to forestall their facilitation of anticompetitive behavior by bringing industry leaders together with Government approval. See Hearings on WOC's Without Compensation Government employees and Government Advisory Groups before the Antitrust Subcommittee of the House Committee on the Judiciary, 84th Cong., 1st Sess., pt. 1, pp. 586-587 (1955) (reprinting guidelines). Several years later, after the House Committee on Government Operations found that the Justice Department's guidelines were frequently ignored, Representative Fascell sponsored a bill that would have accorded the guidelines legal status. H.R. 7390, 85th Cong., 1st Sess. (1957). Although the bill would have required agencies to report to Congress on their use of advisory committees and would have subjected advisory committees to various controls, it apparently would not have imposed any requirements on private groups, not established by the Federal Government, whose advice was sought by the Executive. See H.R.Rep. No. 576, 85th Cong., 1st Sess., 5-7 (1957); 103 Cong.Rec. 11252 (1957) (remarks of Rep. Fascell and Rep. Vorys).
There is no indication, however, that Executive Order No. 11007 was intended to apply to the Justice Department's consultations with the ABA Committee. Neither President Kennedy, who issued the Order, nor President Johnson, nor President Nixon apparently deemed the ABA Committee to be "utilized" by the Department of Justice in the relevant sense of that term. Notwithstanding the ABA Committee's highly visible role in advising the Justice Department regarding potential judicial nominees, and notwithstanding the fact that the Order's requirements were established by the Executive itself rather than Congress, no President or Justice Department official applied them to the ABA Committee. As an entity formed privately, rather than at the Federal Government's prompting, to render confidential advice with respect to the President's constitutionally specified power to nominate federal judgesan entity in receipt of no federal funds and not amenable to the strict management by agency officials envisaged by Executive Order No. 11007the ABA Committee cannot easily be said to have been "utilized by a department or agency in the same manner as a Government-formed advisory committee." That the Executive apparently did not consider the ABA Committee's activity within the terms of its own Executive Order is therefore unsurprising.
see H.R.Rep. No. 91-1731, pp. 9-10 (1970); H.R.Rep. No. 92-1017, p. 4 (1972); S.Rep. No. 92-1098, pp. 3-5, 7 (1972), U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News 1972, p. 3491, as well as to augment the restrictions applicable to advisory committees covered by the statute, there is scant reason to believe that Congress desired to bring the ABA Committee within FACA's net. FACA's principal purpose was to enhance the public accountability of advisory committees established by the Executive Branch and to reduce wasteful expenditures on them. That purpose could be accomplished, however, without expanding the coverage of Executive Order No. 11007 to include privately organized committees that received no federal funds. Indeed, there is considerable evidence that Congress sought nothing more than stricter compliance with reporting and other requirementswhich were made more stringentby advisory committees already covered by the Order and similar treatment of a small class of publicly funded groups created by the President.
This inference draws support from the earlier House Report which instigated the legislative efforts that culminated in FACA. That Report complained that committees "utilized" by an agencyas opposed to those established directly by an agencyrarely complied with the requirements of Executive Order No. 11007. See H.R.Rep. No. 91-1731, supra, at 15. But it did not cite the ABA Committee or similar advisory committees as willful evaders of the Order. Rather, the Report's paradigmatic example of a committee "utilized" by an agency for purposes of Executive Order No. 11007 was an advisory committee established by a quasi-public organization in receipt of public funds, such as the National Academy of Sciences.
There is no indication in the Report that a purely private group like the ABA Committee that was not formed by the Executive, accepted no public funds, and assisted the Executive in performing a constitutionally specified task committed to the Executive was within the terms of Executive Order No. 11007 or was the type of advisory entity that legislation was urgently needed to address.
Paralleling the initial House bill, the Senate bill that grew into FACA defined "advisory committee" as one "established or organized" by statute, the President, or an Executive agency. S. 3529, 92d Cong., 2d Sess. §§ 3(1), (2) (1972). Like the House Report, the accompanying Senate Report stated that the phrase "established or organized" was to be understood in its "most liberal sense, so that when an officer brings together a group by formal or informal means, by contract or other arrangement, and whether or not Federal money is expended, to obtain advice and information, such group is covered by the provisions of this bill." S.Rep. No. 92-1098, supra, at 8. While the Report manifested a clear intent not to restrict FACA's coverage to advisory committees funded by the Federal Government, it did not indicate any desire to bring all private advisory committees within FACA's terms. Indeed, the examples the Senate Report offers"the Advisory Council on Federal Reports, the National Industrial Pollution Control Council, the National Petroleum Council, advisory councils to the National Institutes of Heal h, and committees of the national academies where they are utilized and officially recognized as advisory to the President, to an agency, or to a Government official," ibid.are limited to groups organized by, or closely tied to, the Federal Government, and thus enjoying quasi-public status. Given the prominence of the ABA Committee's role and its familiarity to Members of Congress, its omission from the list of groups formed and maintained by private initiative to offer advice with respect to the President's nomination of Government officials is telling. If the examples offered by the Senate Committee on Government Operations are representative, as seems fair to surmise, then there is little reason to think that there was any support, at least at the committee stage, for going beyond the terms of Executive Order No. 11007 to regulate comprehensively the workings of the ABA Committee.
Read in this way, the term "utilized" would meet the concerns of the authors of House Report No. 91-1731 that advisory committees covered by Executive Order No. 11007, because they were "utilized by a department or agency in the same manner as a Government-formed advisory committee" such as the groups organized by the National Academy of Sciences and its affiliates which the Report discussedwould be subject to FACA's requirements. And it comports well with the initial House and Senate bills' limited extension to advisory groups "established," on a broad understanding of that word, by the Federal Government, whether those groups were established by the Executive Branch or by statute or whether they were the offspring of some organization created or permeated by the Federal Government. Read in this way, however, the word "utilized" does not describe the Justice Department's use of the ABA Committee. Consultations between the Justice Department and the ABA Committee were not within the purview of Executive Order No. 11007, nor can the ABA Committee be said to have been formed by the Justice Department or by § me semiprivate entity the Federal Government helped bring into being.
In sum, a literalistic reading of § 3(2) would bring the Justice Department's advisory relationship with the ABA Committee within FACA's terms, particularly given FACA's objective of opening many advisory relationships to public scrutiny except in certain narrowly defined situations.
A literalistic reading, however, would catch far more groups and consulting arrangements than Congress could conceivably have intended. And the careful review which this interpretive difficulty warrants of earlier efforts to regulate federal advisory committees and the circumstances surrounding FACA's adoption strongly suggests that FACA's definition of "advisory committee" was not meant to encompass the ABA Committee's relationship with the Justice Department. That relationship seems not to have been within the contemplation of Executive Order No. 11007. And FACA's legislative history does not display an intent to widen the Order's application to encircle it. Weighing the deliberately inclusive statutory language against other evidence of congressional intent, it seems to us a close question whether FACA should be construed to apply to the ABA Committee, although on the whole we are fairly confident it should not. There is, however, one additional consideration which, in our view, tips the balance decisively against FACA's application.
Whether or not the court's conclusion was correct, there is no gainsaying the seriousness of these constitutional challenges.
To be sure, "we cannot press statutory construction 'to the point of disingenuous evasion' even to avoid a constitutional question." United States v. Locke, 471 U.S. 84, 96, 105 S.Ct. 1785, 1793, 85 L.Ed.2d 64 (1985), quoting Moore Ice Cream Co. v. Rose, 289 U.S. 373, 379, 53 S.Ct. 620, 622, 77 L.Ed. 1265 (1933). But unlike in Locke, where "nothing in the legislative history remotely suggested a congressional intent contrary to Congress' chosen words," 471 U.S., at 96, 105 S.Ct., at 1793, our review of the regulatory scheme prior to FACA's enactment and the likely origin of the phrase "or utilized" in FACA's definition of "advisory committee" reveals that Congress probably did not intend to subject the ABA Committee to FACA's requirements when the ABA Committee offers confidential advice regarding Presidential appointments to the federal bench. Where the competing arguments based on FACA's text and legislative history, though both plausible, tend to show that Congress did not desire FACA to apply to the Justice Department's confidential solicitation of the ABA Committee's views on prospective judicial nominees, sound sense counsels adherence to our rule of caution. Our unwillingness to resolve important constitutional questions unnecessarily thus solidifies our conviction that FACA is inapplicable.
Affirmed. Justice SCALIA took no part in the consideration or decision of these cases.
This exception remains a legitimate tool of the Judiciary, however, only as long as the Court acts with self-discipline by limiting the exception to situations where the result of applying the plain language would be, in a genuine sense, absurd, i.e., where it is quite impossible that Congress could have intended the result, see ibid., and where the alleged absurdity is so clear as to be obvious to most anyone. A few examples of true absurdity are given in the Holy Trinity decision cited by the Court, ante, at 454, such as where a sheriff was prosecuted for obstructing the mails even though he was executing a warrant to arrest the mail carrier for murder, or where a medieval law against drawing blood in the streets was to be applied against a physician who came to the aid of a man who had fallen down in a fit. See 143 U.S., at 460-461, 12 S.Ct., at 512-513. In today's opinion, however, the Court disregards the plain language of the statute not because its application would be patently absurd, but rather because, on the basis of its view of the legislative history, the Court is "fairly confident" that "FACA should not be construed to apply to the ABA Committee." Ante, at 465. I believe the Court's loose invocation of the "absurd result" canon of statutory construction creates too great a risk that the Court is exercising its own "WILL instead of JUDGMENT," with the consequence of "substituting its own pleasure to that of the legislative body." The Federalist No. 78, p. 469 (C. Rossiter ed. 1961) (A. Hamilton).
None of these examples demonstrate the kind of absurd consequences that would justify departure from the plain language of the statute. A commonsense interpretation of the term "utilize" wou d not necessarily reach the kind of ad hoc contact with a private group that is contemplated by the Court's American Legion hypothetical. Such an interpretation would be consistent, moreover, with the regulation of the General Services Administration (GSA) regulation interpreting the word "utilize," which the Court in effect ignores. See infra, at 477. As for the more regular use contemplated by the Court's examples concerning the NAACP and the national committee of the President's political party, it would not be at all absurd to say that, under the Court's hypothetical, these groups would be "utilized" by the President to obtain "advice or recommendations" on appointments, and therefore would fall within the coverage of the statute. Rather, what is troublesome about these examples is that they raise the very same serious constitutional questions that confront us here (and perhaps others as well).
Unable to show that an application of FACA according the plain meaning of its terms would be absurd, the Court turns instead to the task of demonstrating that a straightforward reading of the statute would be inconsistent with the congressional purposes that lay behind its passage. To the student of statutory construction, this move is a familiar one. It is, as the Court identifies it, the classic Holy Trinity argument. "A thing may be within the letter of the statute and yet not within the statute, because not within its spirit, nor within the intention of its makers." Holy Trinity, supra, at 459, 12 S.Ct., at 512. I cannot embrace this principle. Where it is clear that the unambiguous language of a statute embraces certain conduct, and it would not be patently absurd to apply the statute to such conduct, it does not foster a democratic exegesis for this Court to rummage through unauthoritative materials to consult the spirit of the legislation in order to discover an alternative interpretation of the statute with which the Court is more comfortable. It comes as a surprise to no one that the result of the Court's lengthy journey through the legislative history is the discovery of a congressional intent not to include the activities of the ABA Committee within the coverage of FACA. The problem with spirits is that they tend to reflect less the views of the world whence they come than the views of those who seek their advice.
It is most striking that this section of the Conference Committee Report, which contains Congress' own explicit statement of its purposes in adopting FACA, receives no mention by the Court on its amble through the legislative history. The one statement the Court does quote from this Report, that FACA does not apply " 'to advisory committees not directly established by or for federal agencies,' " ante, at 462, quoting H.R.Conf.Rep. 92-1403, supra, at 10, U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News 1972, p. 3509 (emphasis deleted), is of uncertain value. It is not clear that this passage would exclude the ABA Committee, which was established in 1946 and began almost at once to advise the Government on judicial nominees. It also is not clear why the reasons a committee was formed should determine whether and how they are "utilized by" the Government, or how this consideration can be squared with the plain language of the statute. The Court professes puzzlement because the Report says only that the Conference Committee modified the definition of "advisory committee" to include the phrase "or utilized," but does not explain the extent of the modification in any detail. Ante, at 461-462. One would have thought at least that the Court would have been led to consider how the specific purposes Congress identified for this legislation might shed light on the reasons for the change.
The primary case cited in support of the Court's view, see ante, at 464-465, n. 12, citing General Electric Co. v. Gilbert, 429 U.S. 125, 97 S.Ct. 401, 50 L.Ed.2d 343 (1976), is not at all pertinent. Although in Gilbert the Court mentioned the passage of time in its discussion of the regulations, it made nothing of this point on its own but instead refused to defer to the regulations because they "flatly contradicted the position which the agency had enunciated at an earlier date, closer to the enactment of the governing statute." Id., at 142, 97 S.Ct., at 411. Here, however, the GSA's regulations are consistent with a memorandum prepared by the Office of Management and Budget and distributed to all Government agencies immediately after FACA was enacted. See 38 Fed.Reg. 2307 (1973) (the "utilized by" language of FACA would apply, for example, "to an already existing organization of scholars enlisted by an agency to provide advice on a continuing basis").
The fourth justification the Court offers for ignoring the agency's interpretation is that the GSA lacks statutory authority to issue a binding regulatory interpretation of the term "advisory committee." In Gilbert, for example, the agency which adopted the regulations at issue did not act pursuant to explicit statutory authority to promulgate regulations, and thus its regulations were at most of persuasive rather than controlling force. 429 U.S., at 141-142, 97 S.Ct., at 410-411. But the Court errs in suggesting that the GSA's regulations are mere nonbinding administrative guidelines. The GSA is conceded to be the agency "charged with the administration of FACA," Blum v. Bacon, 457 U.S. 132, 141, 102 S.Ct. 2355, 2361, 72 L.Ed.2d 728 (1982); see ante, at 463, n. 12; it possesses statutory authority to implement the law by promulgating regulations and performing various other specific tasks that have binding effect on other Government agencies and all advisory committees, see FACA, 5 U.S.C.App. §§ 4(a), 7(a)-7(e), 10(a)(2), 10(a)(3) (1982 ed. and Supp. V); see also 40 U.S.C. 486(c) (granting statutory authority for the GSA to promulgate regulations necessary to implement the Federal Property and Administrative Services Act of 1949), and it issued its regulations pursuant to that authority, see 41 CFR §§ 101-6.1001 to 101-6.1035 (1988).
The Court's final step is to summon up the traditional principle that statutes should be construed to avoid constitutional questions. Although I agree that we should "first ascertain whether a construction of the statute is fairly possible by which the constitutional question may be avoided," Crowell v. Benson, 285 U.S. 22, 62, 52 S.Ct. 285, 296, 76 L.Ed. 598 (1932), this principle cannot be stretched beyond the point at which such a construction remains "fairly possible." And it should not be given too broad a scope lest a whole new range of Government action be proscribed by interpretive shadows cast by constitutional provisions that might or might not invalidate it. The fact that a par icular application of the clear terms of a statute might be unconstitutional does not provide us with a justification for ignoring the plain meaning of the statute. If that were permissible, then the power of judicial review of legislation could be made unnecessary, for whenever the application of a statute would have potential inconsistency with the Constitution, we could merely opine that the statute did not cover the conduct in question because it would be discomforting or even absurd to think that Congress intended to act in an unconstitutional manner. The utter circularity of this approach explains why it has never been our rule.
"The President shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the Supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments."
"In the act of nomination, the President's judgment alone would be exercised; and as it would be his sole duty to point out the man who, with the approbation of the Senate, should fill an office, his responsibility would be as complete as if he were to make the final appointment." The Federalist No. 76, 456-457 (C. Rossiter ed. 1961) (emphasis added).
"It will be the office of the President to nominate, and, with the advice and consent of the Senate, to appoint. There will, of course, be no exertion of choice on the part of the Senate. They may defeat one choice of the Executive, and oblige him to make another; but they cannot themselves choosethey can only ratify or reject the choice he may have made." Id., No. 66, at 405 (emphasis in original).
Indeed, the sole limitation on the President's power to nominate these officials is found in the Incompatability Clause, which provides that "no Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States, which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been increased during such time." U.S. Const., Art. I, § 6, cl. 2.
In some of our more recent cases involving the powers and prerogatives of the President, we have employed something of a balancing approach, asking whether the statute at issue prevents the President " 'from accomplishing his constitutionally assigned functions.' " Morrison v. Olson, 487 U.S. 654, 695, 108 S.Ct. 2597, 2621, 101 L.Ed.2d 569 (1988), quoting Nixon v. Administrator of General Services, 433 U.S. 425, 443, 97 S.Ct. 2777, 2790, 53 L.Ed.2d 867 (1977), and whether the extent of the intrusion on the President's powers "is justified by an overriding need to promote objectives within the constitutional authority of Congress." Ibid. In each of these cases, the power at issue was not explicitly assigned by the text of the Constitution to be within the sole province of the President, but rather was thought to be encompassed within the general grant to the President of the "executive Power." U.S.Const., Art. II, § 1, cl. 1. Thus, for example, the relevant aspect of our decision in Morrison involved the President's power to remove Executive officers, a power we had recognized is not conferred by any explicit provision in the text of the Constitution (as is the appointment power), but rather is inferred to be a necessary part of the grant of the "executive Power." See Myers v. United States, 272 U.S. 52, 115-116, 47 S.Ct. 21, 24-25, 71 L.Ed. 160 (1926). Similarly, in Administrator of General Services, supra, we were confronted with the question of the Executive Branch's power to control the disposition of Presidential materials, a matter which, though vital to the President's ability to perform his assigned functions, is not given to exclusive Presidential control by any explicit provision in the Constitution itself. We said there that "the proper inquiry focuses on the extent to which the congressional restriction prevents the Executive Branch from accomplishing its constitutionally assigned functions," and that we would invalidate the statute only if the potential for disruption of the President's constitutional functions were present and if "that impact were not justified by an overriding need to promote objectives within the constitutional authority of Congress." 433 U.S., at 443, 97 S.Ct., at 2790. See also United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683, 703-707, 94 S.Ct. 3090, 3105-3107, 41 L.Ed.2d 1039 (1974) (Executive privilege).
In a line of cases of equal weight and authority, however, where the Constitution by explicit text commits the power at issue to the exclusive control of the President, we have refused to tolerate any intrusion by the Legislative Branch. For example, the Constitution confers upon the President the "Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment." U.S.Const., Art. II, § 2, cl. 1. In United States v. Klein, 80 U.S. (13 Wall.) 128, 20 L.Ed. 519 (1872), the Court considered a federal statute that allowed citizens who had remained loyal to the Union during the Civil War to recover compensation for property abandoned to U ion troops during the War. At issue was the validity of a provision in the statute that barred the admission of a Presidential pardon in such actions as proof of loyalty. Although this provision did not impose direct restrictions on the President's power to pardon, the Court held that the Congress could not in any manner limit the full legal effect of the President's power. As we said there: "It is clear that the legislature cannot change the effect of . . . a pardon any more than the executive can change a law." Id., at 148. More than a century later, in Schick v. Reed, 419 U.S. 256, 95 S.Ct. 379, 42 L.Ed.2d 430 (1974), we reiterated in most direct terms the principle that Congress cannot interfere in any way with the President's power to pardon. The pardon power "flows from the Constitution alone . . . and . . . cannot be modified, abridged, or diminished by the Congress." Id., at 266, 95 S.Ct., at 385. See also Ex parte Garland, 71 U.S. (4 Wall.) 333, 380, 18 L.Ed. 366 (1867).
INS v. Chadha, 462 U.S. 919, 103 S.Ct. 2764, 77 L.Ed.2d 317 (1983), is another example of the Court's refusal to apply a balancing test to assess the validity of an enactment which interferes with a power that the Constitution, in express terms, vests within the exclusive control of the President. In Chadha, the Court struck down a legislative veto provision in the Immigration and Nationality Act on the ground, inter alia, that it violated the explicit constitutional requirement that all legislation be presented to the President for his signature before becoming law. Id., at 946-948, 957-959, 103 S.Ct., at 2781-2783, 2787-2788. In so holding, the Court did not ask whether the "overriding need to promote objectives within the constitutional authority of Congress" justified this intrusion upon the Executive's prerogative, but rather stated that the lawmaking process must adhere in strict fashion to the "explicit and unambiguous provisions of the Constitution which prescribe and define the respective functions of the Congress and of the Executive in the legislative process." Id., at 945, 103 S.Ct., at 2781.
These considerations are decisive of the suit before us. The President's power to nominate principal officers falls within the line of cases in which a balancing approach is inapplicable. The Appointments Clause sets out the respective powers of the Executive and Legislative Branches with admirable clarity. The President has the sole responsibility for nominating these officials, and the Senate has the sole responsibility of consenting to the President's choice. See supra, at 483. We have, in effect, already recognized as much in Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1, 96 S.Ct. 612, 46 L.Ed.2d 659 (1976). In Buckley, the Court held that the appointment of Federal Election Commissioners through procedures that were inconsistent with those set forth in the Appointments Clause was unconstitutional. In doing so, it rejected outright the arguments advanced by the Federal Election Commission and various amici that because the Constitution gave Congress "explicit and plenary authority to regulate the field of activity" at issue (federal elections), and because Congress "had good reasons for not creating a commission composed wholly of Presidential appointees," that Congress could allow these officials to be appointed to their positions without complying with the strict letter of the Appointments Clause. As we stated there:
"While one cannot dispute the basis for Congress' concern that an election commission exist not in whole of presidential appointees as a practical matter, it would seem that those who sought to challenge incumbent Congressmen might have equally good reason to fear a Commission which was unduly responsive to members of Congress whom they were seeking to unseat. But such fears, however rational, do not by themselves warrant a distortion of the Framers' work." Id., at 134, 96 S.Ct., at 689 (emphasis added).
It is also plain that the application of FACA would constitute a direct and real interference with the President's exclusive responsibility to nominate federal judges. The District Court found, "at minimum, that the application of FACA to the ABA Committee would potentially inhibit the President's freedom to investigate, to be informed, to evaluate, and to consult during the nomination process," and that these consequences create an "obvious and significant potential for 'disruption' of the President's constitutional prerogative during the nomination process," 691 F.Supp. 483, 493 (DC 1988), and these findings are not contested here. As we said in the context of the pardon power, "the simplest statement is the best." United States v. Klein, 80 U.S. (13 Wall.), at 148. The mere fact that FACA would regulate so as to interfere with the manner in which the President obtains information necessary to discharge his duty assigned under the Constitution to nominate federal judges is enough to invalidate the Act. "We think it unnecessary to enlarge." Ibid.
Justice KENNEDY agrees with our conclusion that an unreflective reading of the term "utilize" would include the President's occasional consultations with groups such as the NAACP and committees of the President's own political party. See post, at 472. Having concluded that groups such as these are covered by the statute when they render advice, however, Justice KENNEDY refuses to consult FACA's legislative historywhich he later denounces, with surprising hyperbole, as "unauthoritative materials," post, at 473, although countless opinions of this Court, including many written by the concurring Justices, have rested on just such materialsbecause this result would not, in his estimation, be "absurd," post, at 472. Although this Court has never adopted so strict a standard for reviewing committee reports, floor debates, and other nonstatutory indications of congressional intent, and we explicitly reject that standard today, see also infra, at 455, even if "absurdity" were the test, one would think it was met here. The idea that Members of Congress would vote for a bill subjecting their own political parties to bureaucratic intrusion and public oversight when a President or Cabinet officer consults with party committees concerning political appointments is outlandish. Nor does it strike us as in any way "unhealthy," post, at 470, or undemocratic, post, at 473, to use all available materials in ascertaining the intent of our elected representatives, rather than read their enactments as requiring what may seem a disturbingly unlikely result, provided only that the result is not "absurd." Indeed, the sounder and more democratic course, the course that strives for allegiance to Congress' desires in all cases, not just those where Congress' statutory directive is plainly sensible or borders on the lunatic, is the traditional approach we reaffirm today.
Neither Public Citizen nor WLF contends that the ABA Committee is a Presidential advisory committee as Congress understood that term. Nor does it appear to be one. In a House Report on the effectiveness of federal advisory committees, which provided the impetus for legislative proposals that eventually produced FACA, the Committee on Government Operations noted that Presidential committees were a special concern because they often consumed large amounts of federal money and were subject to no controls. The House Committee, however, defined "Presidential committee" narrowly, "as a group with either one or all of its members appointed by the President with a function of advising or making recommendations to him." H.R.Rep. No. 91-1731, p. 10 (1970). None of the ABA Committee's members are appointed by the President, nor does the ABA Committee report directly to him. The House and Senate Reports accompanying early versions of FACA likewise referred to advisory committees "formed" or "established" or "organized" by the President, or to committees created by an Act of Congress to advise the Presidentcategories into which the ABA Committee cannot readily be fitted. See H.R.Rep. No. 92-1017, pp. 4-5 (1972); S.Rep. No. 92-1098, p. 7 (1972). Although FACA itself provides a more open-ended definition of "Presidential advisory committee," applying it to "an advisory committee which advises the President," § 3(4), as set forth in 5 U.S.C. 3(4), that category is a species of "advisory committee," and does not purport to cover committees advising the President that were not "established or utilized" by him. As FACA's legislative history reveals, the Presidential advisory committees Congress intended FACA to reach do not include the ABA Committee.
Second, appellants' claim that the regulation applies to the ABA Committee is questionable. GSA publishes an annual report listing advisory committees covered by FACA. Although 17 reports have thus far been issued, not once has the ABA Committee been included in that list. The agency's own interpretation of its regulation thus appears to contradict the expansive construction appellants ask us to give ita fact which, though not depriving the regulation's language of independent force, see post, at 479, nevertheless weakens the claim that the regulation applies to the Justice Department's use of the ABA Committee.
Third, even if the ABA Committee were covered by the regulation, appellants' case would not be appreciably bolstered. Deference to the agency's expertise in interpreting FACA is less appropriate here than it would be were the regulatory definition a contemporaneous construction of the statute, since the current definition was first promulgated in 1983, see 48 Fed.Reg. 19327 (1983), and did not become final until 1987, see 52 Fed.Reg. 45930 (1987)more than a decade after FACA's passage. See, e.g., Aluminum Co. of America v. Central Lincoln Peoples' Utility Dist., 467 U.S. 380, 390, 104 S.Ct. 2472, 2479, 81 L.Ed.2d 301 (1984); Zenith Radio Corp. v. United States, 437 U.S. 443, 450, 98 S.Ct. 2441, 2445, 57 L.Ed.2d 337 (1978); General Electric Co. v. Gilbert, 429 U.S. 125, 142, 97 S.Ct. 401, 411, 50 L.Ed.2d 343 (1976) (discounting significance of agency interpretive guideline promulgated eight years after statute's enactment, although fact that guideline contradicted agency's earlier position deemed "more importan[t]"); Udall v. Tallman, 380 U.S. 1, 16, 85 S.Ct. 792, 801, 13 L.Ed.2d 616 (1965); Power Reactor Co. v. Electricians, 367 U.S. 396, 408, 81 S.Ct. 1529, 1535, 6 L.Ed.2d 924 (1961); Norwegian Nitrogen Products Co. v. United States, 288 U.S. 294, 315, 53 S.Ct. 350, 358, 77 L.Ed. 796 (1933).