Opinion ID: 391779
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Statutory Policy

Text: 64 A holding that the FCC's enforcement of the Clayton Act is mandatory would clash with decisions holding that the FTC and the ICC have prosecutorial discretion in enforcing that Act, 73 since the enforcement authority of all three agencies derives from Section 11. Moreover, it is well established that the Department of Justice has prosecutorial discretion with reference to criminal laws of the United States. 74 These include the Clayton and Sherman Acts, despite seemingly mandatory language in those statutes. 75 There is no reason we can discern that the FCC, alone of these agencies, should retain no discretion over its antitrust enforcement actions. 76 65 More fundamentally, the inflexible interpretation urged by American Satellite and Western Union runs counter to the purpose of industry regulation. As this court has observed before: The whole theory of licensing and regulation by government agencies is based on the belief that competition cannot be trusted to do the job of regulation in that particular industry which competition does in other sectors of the economy. Hawaiian Telephone Co. v. FCC, 498 F.2d 771, 777 (D.C.Cir.1974). 77 Since the basic goal of direct governmental regulation through administrative bodies and the goal of indirect governmental regulation in the form of antitrust law is the same to achieve the most efficient allocation of resources possible, Northern Natural Gas Co. v. FCC, supra, 399 F.2d at 959, we have insisted that the agencies consider antitrust policy as an important part of their public interest calculus. But the agencies are not strictly bound by the dictates of (the antitrust) laws, id. at 961; rather, they are entrusted with the responsibility to determine when and to what extent the public interest would be served by competition in the industry. 66 The agency's determination about the proper role of competitive forces in an industry must therefore be based, not exclusively on the letter of the antitrust laws, but also on the special considerations of the particular industry. 78 As the Supreme Court has said, resolution of the sometimes-conflicting public interest considerations is a complex task which requires extensive facilities, expert judgment and considerable knowledge of the    industry. Congress left that task to the Commission   . McLean Trucking Co. v. United States, supra, 321 U.S. at 87, 64 S.Ct. at 381. 79 We therefore reject American Satellite's and Western Union's attempt to constrict the FCC's discretion within the parameters of the antitrust laws. We hold that the requirements of Section 11 of the Clayton Act and Section 309(a) of the Communications Act are satisfied when the Commission seriously considers the antitrust consequences of a proposal and weighs those consequences with other public interest factors. 67