Court Opinion

ID: 9419709
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:51:10.05843+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:20.100259
License: Public Domain

Me. Justice Feankfuetee,
dissenting.
The extent to which administrative agencies are to be entrusted with the enforcement of federal legislation is *335for Congress to determine. Insofar as the actions of these agencies come under the scrutiny of judicial review, it is the business of the courts to respect the distribution of authority that Congress makes as between administrative and judicial tribunals. Of course courts must hold the administrative agencies within the confines of their Congressional authority. But in doing so they should not even unwittingly assume that the familiar is the necessary and demand of the administrative process observance of conventional judicial procedures when Congress has made no such exaction. Since these agencies deal largely with the vindication of public interest and not the enforcement of private rights, this Court ought not to imply hampering restrictions, not imposed by Congress, upon the effectiveness of the administrative process. One reason for the expansion of administrative agencies has been the recognition that procedures appropriate for the adjudication of private rights in the courts may be inappropriate for the kind of determinations which administrative agencies are called upon to make.
The disposition of the present case seems to me to disregard these controlling considerations, if the Court now holds, as I understand it so to do, that whenever conflicting applications are made for a radio license the Communications Commission must hear all the applications together.
In the regulation of broadcasting, Congress moved outside the framework of protected property rights. See Commission v. Sanders Radio Station, 309 U. S. 470. Congress could have retained for itself the granting or denial of the use of the air for broadcasting purposes, and it could have granted individual licenses by individual enactments as in the past it gave river and harbor rights to individuals. Instead of making such a crude use of its Constitutional powers, Congress, by the Communications Act of 1934, 48 Stat. 1064, 47 U. S. C. § 151, for*336mulated an elaborate licensing scheme and established the Federal Communications Commission as its agency for enforcement. Our task is to give effect to this legislation and to the authority which Congress has seen fit to repose in the Communications Commission.
To come to the immediate issue, what has the Commission done that is here challenged and what authority from Congress does it avouch for what it has done?
The Commission had before it at least two applications for the use of the same radio wave length in the Western Michigan area (Muskegon-Grand Rapids) — that of the petitioner and Fetzer’s. The problem before the Commission was the procedure appropriate in acting upon these two applications. Congress has authorized the Commission to grant an application without resort to a public hearing, 47 U. S. C. §§ 309 (a), 319 (a), but a public hearing may be demanded when the Commission denies an application, 47 U. S. C. § 309 (a). The Court in effect rules that in the case of multiple applications the Commission can decide only after a public hearing on all of them. This requirement is apparently derived from the assumption that in this case the Commission, having received two conflicting applications, shut off, out of hand and quite arbitrarily, petitioner’s right to have its application considered, as of course the Commission is in duty bound to consider it, by granting Fetzer’s. But that is not what happened. The Commission is charged with the ascertainment of the public interest. We must assume that an agency which Congress has trusted discharges its trust. On the record before us it must be accepted that the Commission, before having taken action, carefully tested, according to its established practice, the claims both of Fetzer and of petitioner by the touchstone of public interest. See Attorney General’s Committee on Administrative Procedure, Monograph No. 3, The Federal Communications Commission (1940) 8 et seq. On *337the basis of such inquiry, it found that the Fetzer application was clearly in the public interest; it found that the Ashbacker application did not make a sufficient showing even to stay the Commission’s hand in withholding the Fetzer grant long enough to enable Ashbacker to support its application more persuasively. On the contrary, it thought the public interest would be furthered by making Fetzer’s service available at the earliest possible date. There is nothing in the Communications Act that restricts the Commission in translating its duty to further the public interest as it did in the particular situation before it. In granting Fetzer’s application and setting the denial of the petitioner’s down for a hearing after fully canvassing the situation, the Commission brought itself within the explicit provisions of the Communications Act and applied them with that flexibility of procedure which Congress has put into the Commission’s own keeping. Federal Communications Commission v. Pottsville Broadcasting Co., 309 U. S. 134, 138.
But it is suggested that the right to a hearing upon denial of an application is not satisfied by a hearing bound to be barren. In order to appreciate the function of a hearing under the statute in a situation like that before us, however, it is vital to remember that the two applications of petitioner’s and Fetzer’s are very different from an ordinary litigation between Fetzer and petitioner in a court of law. Each of them was before the Commission as the representative of the public interest, the ascertainment of which is the expert function of the Communications Commission. It bears repeating that the application of both presumably received careful scrutiny by the Commission before action was taken. Administrative practice indicates that where there are conflicting applications, the Commission has granted some without hearing where it thought the public interest best served by that procedure, while setting others for hearing where the pub-*338lie interest so demanded.1 Fetzer made a clear showing to the agency designated for the purpose by Congress that the public interest would be served by the grant of its application. The same agency found no basis in public interest for Ashbacker’s application. Certainly it is wholly consonant with the scheme of the legislation and the powers given to the Commission that, upon denial of the Ashbacker application after a finding that it would not and Fetzer would serve the public interest, the burden be cast on Ashbacker to show that it would serve the public interest better than would Fetzer. The Commission is authorized by statute to modify a construction permit or any license granted by it.2 This gives considerable scope for adjusting the prior grant to Fetzer so as to give to the public the benefits of reconciling both the Fetzer and the Ashbacker applications, if the hearing should develop considerations not disclosed by the prior scrutiny of the Commission. Not only that, but the Commission, in its opinion on hearing the Ashbacker complaint, construed its own action in granting the Fetzer application to be conditional, so as to have room for any action which it may find will serve the public interest after the hearing on the Ash-*339backer application. Such a practice of conditional grant by the Commission ought not to be deemed outside the range of the procedural discretion allowed to it by Congress.3
In this case, however, the restrictions of the hearing granted to Ashbacker do make of it a mere formality, for the Commission put upon Ashbacker the burden of establishing that the grant of a license to it would not interfere with the simultaneous operations of the proposed Fetzer station. But since the Commission had apparently already concluded that the simultaneous operation of the two stations would result in “intolerable interference,” its order for a hearing seems to foreclose the opportunity that should still be open to Ashbacker. It is entitled to show the superiority of its claim over that of Fetzer, even though the Commission, on the basis of its administrative inquiry, was entitled to grant Fetzer the license in the qualified way in which the statute authorized, and the Commission made, the grant. In my view, therefore, the proper disposition of the case is to return it to the Commission with direction that it modify its order so as to assure an appropriate hearing of the Ashbacker application. It may be wise policy to require that the Communications Commission should give a public hearing for all multiple applications before granting any. But to my reading of the Communications Act, Congress has not expressed this policy.
Me. Justice Rutledge joins in this opinion.

 Conflicting Applications Total No. of No. Granted No. Granted Fiscal Applications Without After Year Considered Number Nearing Nearing
1941 . 159 49 14 2
1942 . 142 52 1 2
1943 . 23 5 0 1
1944 . 39 14 2 1
1945 . 114 69 5 8

 Sec. 312 (b): “Any station license hereafter granted under the provisions of this Act or the construction permit required hereby and hereafter issued, may be modified by the Commission either for a limited time or for the duration of the term thereof, if in the judgment of the Commission such action will promote the public interest, convenience, and necessity, or the provisions of this Act or of any treaty ratified by the United States will be more fully complied with . . .” Cf. 47 Code Fed. Reg. § 1.402.

Cf. Berks Broadcasting Co. (WEEU), Reading, Pennsylvania, 8 F. C. C. 427; The Evening News Association (WWJ), Detroit, Michigan, 8 F. C. C. 552; Merced Broadcasting Co. (KYOS), Merced, California, 9 F. C. C. 118, 120.