Opinion ID: 287864
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: reserve fleet vessels

Text: 93 The majority today holds that the reserve fleet legislation authorizes a span of [judicially unreviewable] executive actions    that are `committed to agency discretion' within the meaning of § 10(a) (2) of the Administrative Procedure Act   . I respectfully dissent. 94 According to both the Administrative Procedure Act and the common law of judicial review on which it was founded, Executive action is subject to judicial review unless committed to agency discretion by law. 6 In the frequent cases where statutes by their terms neither make reviewable nor shield from review Executive action, there exists a presumption of reviewability. American School of Magnetic Healing v. McAnnulty, 187 U.S. 94, 23 S.Ct. 33, 47 L.Ed. 90 (1902); 4 K. C. Davis, Administrative Law Treatise § 28.05 (1958); L. Jaffe, Judicial Control of Administrative Action 346 (1965). 95 This presumption of reviewability is often regarded as reversed for certain types of Executive actions. Actions relating to the conduct of foreign or military affairs have not normally been reviewed by the courts, absent exceptional circumstances. 4 K. C. Davis, supra, § 28.16; L. Jaffe, supra, 363-369. Thus we would not normally review the failure of the Executive to exercise emergency powers granted it for the purpose of meeting the military needs of the nation. 96 However, in this case we are not confronted only by a statute granting such permissive emergency powers. We have before us also the 1956 Act, which commands in terms on their face absolute that American military cargo be shipped in American vessels. With this statute, Congress has confined the otherwise wide discretion of the Executive to hire military transport; Congress has made the decision as to the shipment of American military cargo itself. 97 The majority has already read into the words of the 1956 Act an exception to its command. Foreign ships may transport American military cargo where American ships are not available. I agree. But the majority goes on to hold that the Executive has absolute and unreviewable discretion to rule that American ships in the reserve fleet are not available within the terms of that exception. 98 I am not prepared to go so far. I would hold that the policy of the 1956 Act as we have construed it — that American seamen be favored in the shipment of American military cargo — must be taken into account in the exercise of the power to break out the reserve fleet. 99 The national defense reserve fleet was established by the Merchant Ship Sales Act of 1946, 50 App. U.S.C. §§ 1735-1746 (1964). That Act provided for the sale of part of the large surplus of Government-owned transports and cargo ships built during World War II, and the retention of such other part as deemed necessary for the national security in a reserve fleet. The reserve fleet could be used either when the President had specically authorized requisition of vessels, or when he had proclaimed a general national emergency. 100 One of the policies declared by the Ship Sales Act is that: 101 It is necessary for the national security and development and maintenance of the domestic and the export and import foreign commerce of the United States that the United States have an efficient and adequate American-owned merchant marine    (4) composed of the best-equipped, safest, and most suitable types of vessels, constructed in the United States and manned with a trained and efficient citizen personnel   . 102 50 App. U.S.C. § 1735(a). (Emphasis added.) This declaration of policy indicates to me that the Ship Sales Act, including its provisions concerning the reserve fleet, has in common with the 1956 Act and the Merchant Marine Act of 1936 the purpose of favoring American seamen. 103 Thus the purpose of the statute granting power to break out the reserve fleet is cognate with the seamen benefit purpose of the 1956 and 1936 Acts. The ships made available under that power must then be considered in principle as available under the 1956 Act, given the similar policies behind the two provisions. 104 In holding that the reserve fleet can be available as a matter of law for purposes of the 1956 Act, I would leave the Executive with wide discretion to determine the availability in fact of mothballed ships. Limited review, if indeed review of any kind is to be permitted, is inherent in matters touching national defense. Certainly what we might consider Executive bad judgment, as distinguished from arbitrary action, is not a basis for review. A heavy burden must rest on anyone who would impugn the act of the Executive in the national defense area, particularly in time of national emergency. 105 Moreover, such a decision would imply no requirement that the entire reserve fleet must be activated before a single foreign ship can carry American military cargo. It may be that large numbers of reserve vessels are for one reason or another unsuited to particular transport work. The slowness, cost or inconvenience of breaking out that fleet may be such as to render much of it in practical terms unavailable. I would leave such particular expert judgments to the Executive, subject to review only for abuse of discretion. Such a requirement would not require the Executive to undertake a possibly burdensome, detailed evaluation of the competing interests each time military goods were to be shipped. To avoid the need for making specific findings in particular cases, the Executive could decide to formulate and publish a general policy with respect to the accommodation between the use of the reserve fleet and the 1956 Act. 106 I would not permit the Executive to ignore the command of Congress that [o]nly vessels of the United States or belonging to the United States may be used in the transportation by sea of supplies bought for the Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marine Corps. 10 U.S.C. § 2631 (1964). I would require that the Executive look to the reserve fleet, and have reason for passing over it, before it uses foreign ships to transport American military cargo. Notes: 1 The statute provides: All licensed officers of vessels documented under the laws of the United States, as now required by law, shall be citizens of the United States, native-born or completely naturalized; and upon each departure from the United States of a cargo vessel in respect of which a construction or operating subsidy has been granted all of the crew (crew including all employees of the ship) shall be citizens of the United States, native-born or completely naturalized. 46 U.S.C. § 1132(a) (1964). 2 3 K. C. Davis, Administrative Law Treatise § 22.02 (1958). Professor Davis apparently feels that even before passage of the Administrative Procedure Act aggrievement in fact was sufficient to confer standing under the common law, and that the Supreme Court was simply wrong in Tennessee Electric Power Co. v. T. V. A., 306 U.S. 118, 59 S.Ct. 366, 83 L.Ed. 543 (1937) Id. § 22.04. 3 See 3 K. C. Davis, supra Note 2, §§ 22.04, 22.17 (1965 Pocket Part). 4 This is not to say that there must be an injury in fact in order that there be a case or controversy in the institutional sense. Congress can authorize suits by private attorneys general to vindicate the public interest even where the private party has not suffered any injury different from that suffered by the public generally See Flast v. Cohen, 392 U.S. 83, 116-133, 88 S.Ct. 1942, 20 L.Ed.2d 947 (1968) (dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Harlan); Jaffe, Standing to Secure Judicial Review: Public Actions, 74 Harv.L.Rev. 1265 (1961). Professor Jaffe would go further and permit public actions in some situations even in the absence of specific statutory authorization. 5 While the Court in Flast, and in its quotation from Baker, speaks of the illumination of constitutional issues, the question of standing, of course, is not limited to such issues. Whether the challenged governmental action is alleged to be unconstitutional or simply illegal is irrelevant to standing. In fact, if anything, standing should be conferred more readily where ultra vires rather than unconstitutionality is charged since actions charging only the former do not raise as serious separation of powers considerations. 6 5 U.S.C. § 701 (Supp. IV 1965-1968). The reach of this statutory exception to the general rule of reviewability is not clear. There is respectable authority supporting the proposition that even those actions which are committed to agency discretion by law are reviewable by the courts whenever there has been an abuse of that discretion See Berger, Administrative Arbitrariness: A Synthesis, 78 Yale L.J. 965 (1969).