Opinion ID: 407564
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Vermont Yankee II

Text: 313 The Supreme Court unanimously reversed the panel opinion. 27 The united Court, speaking through Justice Rehnquist, resoundingly rejected the first of the panel's decisional grounds: 314 (N)othing in the APA, NEPA, the circumstances of this case, the nature of the issues being considered, past agency practice, or the statutory mandate under which the Commission operates permitted the (circuit) court to review and overturn the rulemaking proceeding on the basis of the procedural devices employed (or not employed) by the Commission so long as the Commission employed at least the statutory minima, a matter about which there is no doubt in this case. 28 315 The Court did not, however, reverse this court's second finding, concu red in by Judge Tamm. Instead, it remanded that question to us with the following directive: 316 There remains, of course, the question of whether the challenged rule finds sufficient justification in the administrative proceedings that it should be upheld by the reviewing court. Judge Tamm, concurring in the result reached by the majority of the Court of Appeals, thought that it did not. There are also intimations in the majority opinion which suggest that the judges who joined it likewise may have thought the administrative proceedings an insufficient basis upon which to predicate the rule in question. We accordingly remand so that the Court of Appeals may review the rule as the Administrative Procedure Act provides. We have made it abundantly clear before that when there is a contemporaneous explanation of the agency decision, the validity of that action must stand or fall on the propriety of that finding, judged, of course, by the appropriate standard of review. If that finding is not sustainable on the administrative record made, then the Comptroller's decision must be vacated and the matter remanded to him for further consideration. Camp v. Pitts, 411 U.S. 138, 143 (93 S.Ct. 1241, 1244, 36 L.Ed.2d 106) (1973). See also SEC v. Chenery Corp., 318 U.S. 80 (63 S.Ct. 454, 87 L.Ed. 626) (1943). The court should engage in this kind of review and not stray beyond the judicial province to explore the procedural format or to impose upon the agency its own notion of which procedures are best or most likely to further some vague, undefined public good. 29 317 The Vermont Yankee II Court buttressed its explicit mandate with four observations of major significance to our review on remand. First, the Court reiterated the broad scope of NRC authority to deal with fuel cycle issues by rulemaking. 30 Second, the Court declared that this court had fundamentally misconceive(d) the nature of the standard for judicial review of an agency rule. 31 318 (Because) informal rulemaking need not be based solely on the transcript of a hearing held before an agency ... the adequacy of the record in this type of proceeding is not correlated directly to the type of procedural devices employed, but rather turns on whether the agency has followed the statutory mandate of the Administrative Procedure Act or other relevant statutes. 32 319 The Court's third observation, particularly important for our purposes today, emphasized the limited scope of our power to review NRC rulemaking under NEPA. Justice Rehnquist stated in no uncertain terms that a reviewing court's already-limited power to review the substance of agency decisions is not significantly supplemented by the broadly stated environmental mandate found in § 101 of NEPA. 33 In Calvert Cliffs' Coordinating Comm. v. AEC, 34 this court had held that § 101 imposes substantive restraints on agency actions, thus obliging courts to review agency decisions on the merits to ensure their consistency with the goals of NEPA. 35 In Vermont Yankee II the Court acknowledged that while NEPA does set forth significant substantive goals for the Nation, ... its mandate to the agencies is essentially procedural. 36 In Stryckers' Bay Neighborhood Council v. Karlen, 37 the Court elaborated on that statement: 320 Vermont Yankee cuts sharply against the Court of Appeals' conclusion that an agency, in selecting a course of action, must elevate environmental concerns over other appropriate considerations. On the contrary, once an agency has made a decision subject to NEPA's procedural requirements, the only role for a court is to insure that the agency has considered the environmental consequences ; it cannot  'interject itself within the area of discretion of the executive as to the choice of the action to be taken.'  38 321 Furthermore, the Vermont Yankee II Court explicitly rejected Judge Bazelon's view that NEPA authorizes courts to require agencies to develop new procedures to accomplish the innovative task of implementing NEPA through rulemaking: 39 322 We have before observed that NEPA does not repeal by implication any other statute. ... In fact, just two Terms ago, we emphasized that the only procedural requirements imposed by NEPA are those stated in the plain language of the Act.... Thus, it is clear NEPA cannot serve as a basis for a substantial revision of the carefully constructed procedural specifications of the APA. 40 323 Thus, after Vermont Yankee II, reviewing courts must not only limit their substantive review of agency action to the appropriate standards under the APA, they must take pains in their procedural review to avoid imposing requirements in excess of the statutory minima or extending their scrutiny beyond the plain language of § 102. 324 Vermont Yankee II 's fourth major pronouncement arose from its discussion of a consolidated case. Addressing Consumers Power Co. v. Aeschliman, 41 which presented identical fuel cycle issues in the licensing context, the Vermont Yankee II Court reiterated both the breadth of NRC statutory authority and the limited role of a court in reviewing the sufficiency of an agency's consideration of environmental factors under NEPA. 42 The Court expressly recognized that § 102(2)(C) requires responsible agency officials to include in each EIS a detailed statement ... on ... alternatives to the proposed federal action 43 and that NEPA obliges agencies to consider every significant aspect of the environmental impact of the action. 44 Nevertheless, it refused to read those NEPA requirements as placing on the agency the burden of justifying every decision not to consider a highly unlikely alternative to a given action. The initial burden of establishing that an alternative is sufficiently material to require agency consideration, the Court suggested, properly rests with the challenger to the agency action. 45 Furthermore, the Court reasoned, even when the challenger has met that burden, the agency's subsequent duty to consider and explore little-known technological alternatives must necessarily be bounded by two practical constraints: the feasibility of those alternatives 46 and the extent of information about them currently available. 47 325 In short, the Vermont Yankee II Court's discussion of Consumers Power confirmed a view this court has stated several times: that NEPA necessarily allows agencies some flexibility in determining the contents of their environmental impact statements in situations where uncertainty is abundant, technological alternatives are still developing, and much crucial information remains unavailable. 48 In such circumstances, as Judge Wright noted in Scientists' Institute for Public Information v. AEC, 49 NEPA is not a paper tiger, but neither is it a straitjacket. 50 326 Vermont Yankee II closed with the unambiguous command that courts should not employ judicial review of NRC action to encroach on fundamental policy choices in the nuclear power arena: 327 Nuclear energy may some day be a cheap, safe source of power or it may not. But Congress has made a choice to at least try nuclear energy, establishing a reasonable review process in which courts are to play only a limited role. The fundamental policy questions appropriately resolved in Congress and in the state legislatures are not subject to re-examination in the federal courts under the guise of judicial review of agency action. Time may prove wrong the decision to develop nuclear energy, but it is Congress or the States within their appropriate agencies which must eventually make that judgment. In the meantime courts should perform their appointed function. 51