Opinion ID: 108014
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: significance of departmental construction

Text: While this Court has announced that it will accord great weight to a departmental construction of its own enabling legislation, especially a contemporaneous construction, see Udall v. Tallman, 380 U. S. 1, 16 (1965); Power Reactor Co. v. Electricians, 367 U. S. 396, 408 (1961); it is only one input in the interpretational equation. Its impact carries most weight when the administrators participated in drafting and directly made known their views to Congress in committee hearings. See Power Reactor Co. v. Electricians, supra ; United States v. American Trucking Assns., 310 U. S. 534, 539 (1940). In such circumstances, absent any indication that Congress differed with the responsible department, a court should resolve any ambiguity in favor of the administrative construction, if such construction enhances the general purposes and policies underlying the legislation. See American Power & Light Co. v. SEC, 329 U. S. 90, 112-114 (1946). The Court may not, however, abdicate its ultimate responsibility to construe the language employed by Congress. Those props that serve to support a disputable administrative construction are absent here. There is no suggestion in the findings, nor have the parties explained, how the present differential contributes to the broad, general purpose of eliminating crippling competition. Nor in the present case has the Court's attention been drawn to any hearings that suggest that Congress acted with the particular administrative construction before it in either 1935 or 1937. And if those administrators who participated in drafting the 1935 Act understood market differentials to encompass the farm location differential, they obviously failed to communicate their understanding to the drafters of the committee report. It is also evident that the 1937 re-enactment of the 1935 amendments was routine and did not follow a comprehensive review of the issues that had been explored in detail by the 1935 draftsmen who wrote the committee reports. [28] It is true that a report from the Federal Trade Commission set forth the computations employed under the 1936 Boston order which apparently provided for a nearby differential. [29] But the stark figures, set forth in the appendix to the report without explication, can hardly be said to have given the administrative construction the notoriety that this Court found persuasive in Udall v. Tallman, 380 U. S., at 18. In Udall the Court was impressed by the fact that the Secretary's interpretation had been a matter of public record and discussion. Id., at 17. Even despite active congressional involvement in reviewing certain administrative action in connection with particular leases, the Court noted that it would not attribute ratification to Congress. Udall v. Tallman, supra . Nor can petitioners put flesh on this argument by citing § 4 of the 1937 re-enactment, 50 Stat. 249, [30] and the committee report, H. R. Rep. No. 468, 75th Cong., 1st Sess., 4 (1937), which merely states in the language of the Act that § 4 purports to ratify, legalize, and confirm all action taken pursuant to the agreement and order provisions under the 1935 statute. [31]