Court Opinion

ID: 9419219
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:47:41.961645+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:16.312073
License: Public Domain

Me. Justice Jackson,
dissenting:
Me. Justice Frankfurtee and I are unable to agree with this disposition of the case.
It overturns the exercise of a discretion which Congress has delegated to the Interstate Commerce Commission upon grounds which seem to us so unsubstantial as really to be a reversal on suspicion. The function of determining “grandfather” rights delegated in this case is not unlike the function dealt with in Gray v. Powell, 314 U. S. 402, in which we said that Congress could have legislated specifically as to individual exemptions but “found it more efficient to delegate that function to those whose experience in a particular field gave promise of a better informed, more equitable adjustment of the conflicting interests” (p. 412). We held that this delegation will be respected and that, unless we can say that a set of circumstances deemed by the Commission to bring a particular applicant within the concept of the statute “is so unrelated to the tasks entrusted by Congress to the Commission as in effect to deny a sensible exercise of judgment, it is the Court’s duty to leave the Commission’s judgment undisturbed” (p. 413). While the Court pays lip service to this principle, the Commission’s decision is upset because, as the opinion states, “We have doubts”; “We are not confident”; and “We are not satisfied.” The opinion proceeds as it might do with a burden upon the Commission, although we supposed the burden to be upon those who *491complain of an administrative decision to satisfy the Court that the decision is wrong — particularly one dealing with an exemption from a general duty.
We do not agree that a remand to the Commission to make specific findings of the kind required in Florida v. United States, 282 U. S. 194, 215, is appropriate. In the Florida case, the Commission undertook to revise intrastate railroad rates under control of the state and over which, as Chief Justice Hughes said, “the Commission has no general authority.” 282 U. S. at 212. It was required to support its jurisdiction to revise rates not within its general control by specific findings as to whether those rates in any way constituted a burden on interstate commerce. The Court had earlier established the rule that an order of the Commission should not be given precedence over a state rate statute otherwise valid “unless, and except so far as, it conforms to a high standard of certainty.” Illinois Central R. Co. v. Public Utilities Commission, 245 U. S. 493, 510. And in this connection the Court pointed out that even an act of Congress is not to be construed to supersede or suspend the exercise of the reserved powers of the state, even where the Constitution permits, “except so far as its purpose to do so is clearly manifested.” It is one thing to require the Interstate Commerce Commission to be explicit in finding jurisdictional facts before it invades conceded state power. It is a wholly different thing to read with a hostile eye the Commission’s findings that a claim for exemption from conceded federal regulatory authority has not been sustained.
Furthermore, if after this case is returned to the Commission, the Commission should leave no room for doubt that in making the challenged order it acted upon correct notions of law, it may yet be upset because the Court says its findings are not sustained by the evidence, it *492had better be said now. We have here a small record and simple facts, which áre all before us, giving adequate basis for concluding whether these facts as found by the Commission warranted the order. On this record it is plain what the Commission has done. The only question is — Can it do what it has done? To send the case back to the Commission to be reconsidered or to say that it has already been considered in the light of the legal views which the Court expresses, and then, perhaps, to say that in any event the order is not warranted on the record before us, is really to invite the Commission to express abstract views on law. What this amounts to is that the Court refuses to tell the Commission what it thinks about the evidence until the Commission tells what it thinks about the law. We cannot regard this as the most helpful use of the power of judicial review.
Congress by the Motor Carrier Act of 1935 cast upon the Commission the task of regulating the motor carrier industry. By the enactment, Congress asserted that the public interest in the motor carrier enterprise had become paramount to private interests. The highly individualistic nature of the business and the easy terms upon which equipment could be obtained had promoted a quick growth accompanied by intense and uneconomic competition, both within itself and with other transportation systems. It was not expected that a sprawling, chaotic, and cutthroat industry that had developed entirely in the private interest would be reduced to an orderly and regularized system of transportation in the public interest without stepping on a good many individual toes.1 *493In trying to limit the injury caused by transition from a purely private enterprise to a regulated public service industry, the general plan was to preserve to private owners the transportation values evidenced by actual conditions of operation on June 1, 1935, and to exempt them from meeting the requirements of “public convenience and necessity” as to such operation. Those who obtained such “grandfather” rights are not, however, limited to them. They may expand their territory or extend their service by proving that public convenience and necessity will be served thereby. Thus, the scramble for “grandfather” rights represents the effort to pre-empt territory and service privileges without submitting to the test of the public interest. Public regulation would be defeated at its very outset if the Commission permitted the bulk of the industry to escape the public interest test by inflated claims under the “grandfather” clause. The nature of the general task of reducing the claims of “grandfather” rights to defined and reasonable limits consistent with the plan of public regulation is disclosed by the record in this case.
The motor carrier here asked as a matter of right that the Commission certify its “grandfather” privileges to include the carriage of general commodities in a territory comprising substantially the Atlantic seaboard from South Carolina to Massachusetts. That there was some disparity between its hopes and its experience was indicated by the fact that on June 1, 1935, it was operating eight trucks, and by 1936, the number of usable vehicles had fallen to four. After a change of ownership the number was increased, and at the time of hearing the applicant was operating seventeen carrying units.
This carrier did not operate at stated times or over regular routes, but was an irregular route carrier. The backbone of its business consisted of carriage of cotton *494yarn from points of origin in the South to points of distribution in the North. Incidental to this carriage it was ready to accept cargo of almost any kind to complete its loads and particularly to provide earnings on return trips. If satisfactory terms could be arrived at, it was willing to carry almost anything almost any place. On the basis of such general holdings-out, this carrier sought certificates that would entitle it as a matter of right to carry nearly everything within the territory described.
The Commission cut down the claims of the applicant by the use of the standard which the Act prescribes: namely, bona fide operation as a common carrier by motor vehicle. The Commission reduced the territorial claim to that which the carrier actually served with some regularity, and lopped off territory which had been served only occasionally or by isolated trips. It limited the commodities to be carried to those carried in substantial volume during the period before and after June 1, 1935. We find no basis upon which we can say as matter of law that these general methods of reducing nebulous and extravagant claims to a compass which the Commission could properly certify as representing bona fide operation are improper or other than those contemplated by the statute.
The Court is “not confident” that the Commission applied to this irregular route carrier the same test as to commodities that is applied to regular route carriers. We cannot be so confidently unconfident. The Commission seems to have made only the distinction between irregular and the regular route carriers that results from the differences inherent in the two types of enterprise. The Commission has tested both by the regularity and substantiality of their actual operations. It is a test with which they may have unequal ability to comply, but to reach different results on such different facts does not imply *495either the use of different legal standards or discriminatory administration.
The administrators of the Motor Carrier Act must be aware, as the framers of it were, that “the grandfather clause as of June 1,1935, has been fixed in fairness to bona fide motor carriers now operating on the highway and limited so as to prevent speculation which is highly important.” Report of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, H. R. Rep. No. 1645, 74th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 4. When a carrier claims grandfather rights to serve the entire Atlantic seaboard as a general common carrier with equipment consisting on the critical date, of eight trucks, the Commission is obviously forewarned that it must guard against granting franchise privileges that will result in their having a speculative value to the carrier rather than a service value to the public. The Commission was quite right to take the measure of the territory and service of such a claimant and to give him a certificate covering his actual substantial operations. We should not substitute our own wisdom or unwisdom for that of administrative officers who have kept within the bounds of their administrative powers. A. T. & T. Co. v. United States, 299 U. S. 232, 236.

 See Report of Joseph B. Eastman, Federal Coordinator of Transportation, on the Regulation of Transportation Agencies other than Railroads. Sen. Doc. No. 152, 73rd Cong., 2nd Sess., p. 13 et seq.
See also Report of the Committee on Interstate Commerce on the Motor Carrier Act, 1935, Sen, Rep. No. 482,74th Cong., 1st Sess.