Court Opinion

ID: 9422768
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:04:26.729713+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:39.365431
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Harlan,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I.
Contrary to what I had first thought, the Government is not asking in this case, as it did in United States v. Yellow Cab Co., 338 U. S. 338, that we “in effect . . . try the case de novo,” id., at 340. Rather it contends that on the undisputed facts of record the ultimate determination below was clearly erroneous. See id., at 341-342. For reasons given in the Court’s opinion, I agree that a violation of § 7 of the Clayton Act has been established, and that the District Court erred in deciding otherwise. On this score I shall comment only on two matters.
First. The Court’s strictures concerning the District Court’s findings seem to me to miss the mark. Findings of fact should, of course, be the product of the conscientious and independent judgment of the district judge. Nevertheless, if they are supported by evidence, they are not rendered suspect simply because the trial court, as *663here, has accepted in toto the findings proposed by one side or the other. The real lack in this case is that the District Court wrote no opinion setting forth the reasoning underlying any of the subsidiary findings on disputed issues of fact or connecting the subsidiary findings with its ultimate determination that the Clayton Act had not been violated by this merger.
Both as a practitioner and as a judge I have more than once felt that a closely contested government antitrust case, decided below in favor of the defendant, has foundered in this Court for lack of an illuminating opinion by the District Court. District Courts should not forget that such cases, the trials of which usually result in long and complex factual records, come here without the benefit of any sifting by the Courts of Appeals. The absence of an opinion by the District Court has been a handicap in this instance.
Second. This case affords another example of the unsatisfactoriness of the existing bifurcated system of antitrust and other regulation in various fields. In this case, the Federal Power Commission had indicated its approval of this merger as being in the public interest. The Department of Justice, however, considered the merger to be violative of the antitrust laws and, for that reason alone, against the public interest. This Court, under the present scheme of things has no choice on this record* but to sustain the position of the Department of Justice, as indeed it has felt constrained to do, albeit in my view with less justification, in other recent cases involving dual regulation. Cf. United States v. Philadelphia National Bank, 374 U. S. 321; United States v. First National Bank & Trust Co., decided today, post, p. 665, and my dissenting opinions in those cases. It would be unrealistic not to recognize that this state of affairs has *664the effect of placing the Department of Justice in the driver’s seat even though Congress has lodged primary-regulatory authority elsewhere.
It does seem to me that the time has come when this duplicative and, I venture to say, anachronistic system of dual regulation should be re-examined. Had the subtle and necessarily speculative questions involved in assessing the short-term and long-term effects of this merger been subject to appraisal by a single agency, under con-gressionally established standards marking the relationship between the different and often competing objectives of the antitrust laws and those governing the regulation of “interstate” natural gas, who can say that this case might not have called for a different outcome?
II.
While I agree with the Court’s decision on the merits, I dissent from its peremptory ordering of divestiture. “The framing of” appropriate relief “should take place in the District rather than in Appellate Courts.” International Salt Co., Inc., v. United States, 332 U. S. 392, 400 (footnote omitted). United States v. E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., 366 U. S. 316, is not to the contrary; that case had already been here before on the merits (353 U. S. 586), and when it came here again at the relief stage the Court observed that “the District Courts [have] the responsibility initially to fashion the remedy . . . .” 366 U. S., at 323. I know of no case where this Court has in the first instance itself directed divestiture or any other particular kind of relief. The fact that these appellees have been “on notice,” ante, p. 662, of the charges against them affords no justification for this departure from normal practice. See the cases cited in the second du Pont case, 366 U. S., at 322.
I would remand the case to the District Court for the fashioning of appropriate relief.

This Court has not had the benefit of an amicus brief from the Federal Power Commission.