Opinion ID: 348607
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Joint Rates in Foreign Commerce Between Motor Carriers and Ocean Carriers

Text: 53 Section 302(a) of Part II of the Act broadly confers jurisdiction on the ICC over the transportation of passengers or property by motor carriers engaged in interstate or foreign commerce . . . . 50 Section 303(a)(11) in turn defines foreign commerce as 54 commerce, whether such commerce moves wholly by motor vehicle or partly by motor vehicle and partly by rail, express, or water, (A) between any place in the United States and any place in a foreign country. 51 55 It is necessary to elucidate two points concerning the language of section 303(a)(11) before proceeding to examine additional statutory provisions concerning joint motor/ocean rates. First, it appears clear from the structure of the provisions that the reference to water carriers in section 303(a)(11) is a reference to FMC-regulated carriers operating in foreign commerce. Second, since the definition of foreign commerce in § 303(a)(11) tracks the language of § 1(1), the foreign commerce jurisdiction under Part II is as broad as that under Part I. Therefore, Part II foreign commerce jurisdiction also extends to nonadjacent as well as adjacent foreign countries. 56 Section 316(c) of the Act provides that (c)ommon carriers of property by motor vehicle may establish reasonable through routes and joint rates, charges, and classifications with other such carriers or with common carriers by railroad and/or express and/or water . . . . 52 Furthermore, section 317(a) of the Act provides that 57 (e)very common carrier by motor vehicle shall file with the Commission . . . tariffs showing all the rates . . . in connection (with) foreign commerce . . . between points on its own route and points on the route of any other such carrier, . . . when a through route and joint rate shall have been established. 53 58 The foregoing sections, taken together, represent an explicit conferral of jurisdiction on the ICC to accept for filing joint through rates established by motor and ocean carriers. Indeed, in light of this language, the Commission's prior policy of not accepting the joint rates appears to be the position most inconsistent with the plain statutory mandate, not the rules embodied in Ex Parte No. 261. 59 In challenging the ICC's authority to accept joint motor/ocean rates for filing, petitioner points to the 1962 amendment to section 316(c) which conferred jurisdiction on the ICC over joint motor/ocean rates between Alaska and Hawaii on the one hand and the contiguous forty-eight states. 54 Petitioner suggests that, in the absence of a similar amendment covering foreign commerce, no joint rate authority over foreign commerce exists. 55 We disagree with petitioner on this point. 60 The 1962 amendment to section 316(c) went well beyond purporting to confer the kind of jurisdiction over Alaska/Hawaii joint rates that the ICC has asserted over foreign commerce in the present proceeding. 56 The purpose of the 1962 amendment to section 316(c) was to make Alaska/Hawaii joint rates  subject to the provisions of this part, thereby bringing such joint rates in their entirety under substantive ICC rate regulation and thereby ousting the FMC from jurisdiction over the same rates. 57 Here, by contrast, the ICC has only asserted jurisdiction to accept the joint rates for filing, not to regulate the ocean portion of the rate and not to duplicate or replace the FMC's functions. Thus the 1962 amendment concerning Alaska and Hawaii does not suggest that similar legislation is required in order to support the ICC's action here. 61 Insofar as the 1962 amendment may have been deemed necessary by Congress merely to permit filing of joint motor/ocean Alaska and Hawaii rates, it must be remembered that as of 1962 the ICC was still applying the policy enunciated in Cosmopolitan Shipping Co. against even accepting such rates. Legislation was one way to change this agency practice. A well-reasoned and fully explained change of policy by the agency itself as was done in Ex Parte No. 261 represents another way to accomplish this same result. A congressional intent to ratify the ICC's restrictive 1908 policy decision can hardly be inferred from the fact that Congress rejected this policy in a specific area of commerce where the filing of joint rates was deemed necessary in 1962. 58 62