Opinion ID: 287864
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: status of reserve fleet vessels

Text: 25 Appellant argues that the Government-owned transport ships within the national defense reserve fleet are available American ships, which must be used for military cargo pursuant to the Cargo Preference Act, before resort is had to foreign vessels. 26 The reserve fleet legislation, enacted as part of the Merchant Ship Sales Act of 1946, now provides, 50 U.S.C. App. § 1744(a) (1964):    Unless otherwise provided for by law, all vessels placed in [national defense] reserve shall be preserved and maintained by the [Secretary of Commerce] for the purpose of national defense. A vessel placed in such reserve shall in no case be used for any purpose whatsoever except that any such vessel may be used for account of any agency or department of the United States during any period in which vessels may be requisitioned under [46 U.S.C. 1242]   . We have been in such a period since December 16, 1950, the date of President Truman's proclamation of national emergency. 27 The case involves the interplay of two statutes — the cargo preference legislation and the reserve fleet legislation. It is axiomatic that they should be construed so as to harmonize, and to the maximum extent effectuate, respective underlying policies. For this court to require laid-up ships to be reactivated in order to satisfy cargo preference provisions would negate the Congressional purpose of maintaining a reserve fleet as an emergency stockpile, and would turn a flexible asset into a millstone for those who must coordinate transportation of today's military cargoes with long-range defense requirements. 28 In our view the cargo preference legislation does not contain a mandate that overrides the judgment of the executive department whether to draw on the mothball vessels maintained for use in emergencies. 29 There being no overriding mandate, either of another statute, or the Constitution, we hold that the legislation providing for a reserve fleet available for use in emergencies authorizes a span of executive actions — pertaining to the fleet's establishment, expansion, curtailment, maintenance and use — that are committed to agency discretion within the meaning of § 10(a) (2) of the Administrative Procedure Act, 12 and are not subject to judicial surveillance and correction for error in the exercise of discretion. 30 Our conclusion does not set aside the general rule that official administrative action is reviewable in courts when a person claims injury from an act taken by a government official in excess of his powers. 31 While that is sound doctrine, recognized by decisions 13 and approved by scholars, 14 it is not a universal precept but only a general widespread rule, a rule subject to exceptions. These exceptions do not violate, they rather define, the rule of reviewability. 32 That the matter before us for consideration lies in the special zones of the exceptions, rather than the ordinary area of judicial reviewability, is established by several cardinal aspects of the issues. The case involves decisions relating to the conduct of national defense; the President has a key role; the national interest contemplates and requires flexibility in management of defense resources; and the particular issues call for determinations that lie outside sound judicial domain in terms of aptitude, facilities, and responsibility. 33 The legislative history reenforces this view of the nature of the reserve fleet law and executive actions contemplated under the law. 15 The significance of the features mentioned above is highlighted by court decisions to which we turn. 34 In Chicago & Southern Air Lines, Inc. v. Waterman Steamship Corp., 333 U.S. 103, 68 S.Ct. 431, 92 L.Ed. 568 (1948), the Court held, without dissent, that Presidential determination on applications for authority to engage in overseas and foreign air transport are not subject to judicial review. See 333 U.S. at 108, 111, 68 S.Ct. at 434, 436: 35 That aerial navigation routes and bases should be prudently correlated with facilities and plans for our own national defenses and raise new problems in conduct of foreign relations, is a fact of common knowledge.    The President, both as Commander-in-Chief and as the Nation's organ for foreign affairs, has available intelligence services whose reports neither are nor ought to be published to the world. It would be intolerable that courts, without the relevant information, should review and perhaps nullify actions of the Executive taken on information properly held secret. Nor can courts sit in camera in order to be taken into executive confidences. But even if courts could require full disclosure, the very nature of executive decisions as to foreign policy is political, not judicial. Such decisions are wholly confided by our Constitution to the political departments of the government, Executive and Legislative. They are delicate, complex, and involve large elements of prophecy. They are and should be undertaken only by those directly responsible to the people whose welfare they advance or imperil. They are decisions of a kind for which the Judiciary has neither aptitude, facilities nor responsibility and which has long been held to belong in the domain of political power not subject to judicial intrusion or inquiry. 36 The President's action in determining whether a person deserves appointment to a military commission, or any other position of trust and honor, is likewise not subject to judicial scrutiny. Orloff v. Willoughby, 345 U.S. 83, 92, 73 S.Ct. 534, 97 L.Ed. 842 (1953). So also is a decision over assignment to military service. Ibid. 37 These Supreme Court rulings are not dispositive by themselves of the matter before us. But they point up the relevant considerations. Perhaps closer in terms of particular issues, though not identical, are circuit court rulings. Our own court has noted, in dictum: 38 It is — and must — be true that the Executive should be accorded wide and normally unassailable discretion with respect to the conduct of the national defense and the prosecution of national objectives through military means. The power of the armed services to make their dispositions of men and materiel, and to take measures for the safeguarding of each does not admit of fragmentation. (Emphasis added.) 16 39 In United States ex rel. Schonbrun v. Commanding Officer, 403 F.2d 371 (2d Cir. 1968), cert. denied 394 U.S. 929, 89 S.Ct. 1195, 22 L.Ed.2d 460 (March 24, 1969), the court, through Judge Friendly, held that it must decline to review the military's refusal to grant a hardship exemption to a ready reservist ordered to report for active duty. See pp. 374-375: 40 The very purpose of a ready reserve is that the reserve shall be ready. Under the regulations, delay or exemption from active duty in hardship cases is authorized but not required. The hardship must be extreme, and while the regulations wisely give more specific content to this criterion, a good deal is necessarily left to the judgment of the commanding officer. In contrast to the yea or nay character of entitlement to the conscientious objection exemption, administration of the hardship exemption necessarily involves a balancing of the individual's claims against the nation's needs, and the balance may differ from time to time and from place to place in a manner beyond the competence of a court to decide. While no one could reasonably assert that the country would perish if Schonbrun did not serve with his company, delay in the call-up of a reservist, even during the period necessary for judicial consideraion of his claim to discretionary exemption, inevitably means either a gap in the unit or the call of another reservist who otherwise might not have been reached. 41 While every case must turn on its own issues, 17 we think this analysis of people reserves is a meaningful parallel for the issue of vessel reserves before us. Before turning to more detailed consideration of reserve fleet legislation involved in the case before us, we think it appropriate to identify certain strands of doctrine that are not involved in our decision. We expressly note that our decision does not involve personal rights and liberties, 18 does not involve constitutional claims, and does not involve a right expressly granted by statute that qualifies what would otherwise be non-reviewable discretion. 19 42 Furthermore, our decision does not contradict the principle that even where an official action is of a type which generally involves the exercise of discretion the court has power to inquire into a claim of abuse of discretion, or use of procedurally unfair and unauthorized techniques, inflicting injury on private citizens. 20 The point of our decision is that there is a narrow band of matters that are wholly committed to official discretion, and that the inappropriateness or even mischief involved in appraising a claim of error or of abuse of discretion, and testing it in an evidentiary hearing, leads to the conclusion that there has been withdrawn from the judicial ambit any consideration of whether the official action is arbitrary or constitutes an abuse of discretion. 43 This case does not remotely involve, and there is no claim seeking, the kind of exception that may justify judicial review in certain instances even as to matters generally committed to the final judgment of an official. These exceptional instances relate to a case where there has been not merely a contention of error or abuse of discretion, but also facts adduced in support of a claim of the kind of bad faith, fraud, or conscious wrongdoing which in effect undercuts the assumption that the personnel involved have been genuinely acting as government officials. 21 44 The soundness of our conclusion that the decisions whether, when, and how to add to or detract from the reserve fleet in time of emergency, are committed to official discretion is established by the fact that these decisions are inextricably intertwined with and permeated by assumptions and conclusions of national defense strategy. 22 45 In time of stress and emergency our officials need freedom to act. Congress gave the Executive such freedom in relation to the reserve fleet. The statute empowering officials to call upon the reserve fleet during a declared national emergency does not mean that they are obligated to draw upon this resource in every declared emergency. Yet the position adopted by appellant points to this result. 46 Even the determination of how long it will take to put a laid-up vessel into service for carriage of military cargo is not a mere mechanical computation. At the very least there will be questions of judgment as to the level of efficiency and reliability that is to be sought when reserve vessels are reactivated for emergency use. 47 The administration of commercial cargo preference provisions 23 involves questions of judgment requiring close analysis and nice choices. 24 The issues of judgment take on a heightened dimension when such issues as deliverability and range of tolerable delay relate to supplies necessary for the military effort. 48 The range of executive judgments involved are likely to involve estimates as to when, where, and how much cargo will have to be moved in the future — not only military but also foreign aid cargoes. The decisions also require a judgment of the feasibility of providing sustained employment for a reactivated vessel. 25 49 This court cannot sit in judgment to review a determination which involves appraisals like those outlined. The manifest difficulties cannot be obviated by construing the statute as requiring only that the authorities consider the feasibility of employing the reserve fleet ships for transporting military cargoes. There is no satisfactory exit once the judiciary crosses the threshold and enters the domain of these matters. Unless our determinations are to be merely precatory, a decision that Military Sea Transportation Service or the Department of Defense must consider using mothballed ships necessarily invites future litigation concerning first the fact of such consideration vel non, and then whether the consideration has sufficient rationality to escape condemnation as an empty formality. 50 Even restricted review requires probing the surface and going beyond mere conclusory affidavits setting forth the department's reasons. Any other approach belies the notion that these matters before us are not in fact necessarily committed to agency discretion. Settled doctrine does not permit us to accept at face value administrative determinations without at least surveying a record. 26 51 We do not deal with officials who are operating under discernible statutory standards, or a mandate to develop standards to assure even-handed justice. They are rather likely to be called on to make and revise judgments freely, perhaps to draw heavily on information from sources abroad or in the domain of the military in making global guesstimates. Not all operations of government are subject to judicial review, even though they may have a profound effect on our lives. 27 52 To avoid misunderstanding we note that the decision whether and how to let vessels out of the reserve fleet may well be influenced by a desire to use these ships, and American crews, in carrying American military supplies, and the awareness that when taken out of the reserve fleet they have a certain guaranty of employment arising out of the cargo preference legislation. 53 But there is no legislative mandate that is judicially enforceable which requires use of the mothball fleet to be given due consideration as a condition of use of foreign flag vessels. When, as, and if, executive officials reactivate reserve vessels into operating condition, they become fully available for the purpose of cargo preference legislation. Until then, they are part of a stockpile held for emergencies but not now in operation, and they are outside the category of available vessels that a court may mandate the executive officials to consider before shipping military supplies in foreign bottoms. 54 Affirmed.