Court Opinion

ID: 9418853
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:41:24.033458+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:14:57.924376
License: Public Domain

Me. Justice Caedozo,
concurring.
The delegated power of legislation which has found expression in this code is not canalized within banks that keep it from overflowing. It is unconfined and vagrant, if I may borrow my own words in an earlier opinion. Panama Refining Co. v. Ryan, 293 U. S. 388, 440.
This court has held that delegation may be unlawful though the act to be performed is definite and single, if the necessity, time and occasion of performance have been left in the end to the discretion of the delegate. Panama Refining Co. v. Ryan, supra. I thought that ruling went too far. I pointed out in an opinion that there had been “ no grant to the Executive of any roving commission to inquire into evils and then, upon discovering them, do anything he pleases.” 293 U. S. at p. 435. Choice, though within limits, had been given him “ as to the occasion, but none whatever as to the means.” Ibid. Here, in the case before us, is an attempted delegation not confined to any single act nor to any class or group of acts identified or described by reference to a standard. Here in effect is a roving commission to inquire into evils and upon discovery correct them.
*552I have said that there is no standard, definite or even approximate, to which legislation must conform. Let me make my meaning more precise. If codes of fair competition are codes eliminating “ unfair ” methods of competition ascertained upon inquiry to prevail in one industry or another, there is no unlawful delegation of legislative functions when the President is directed to inquire into such practices and denounce them when discovered. For many years a like power has been committed to the Federal Trade Commission with the approval of this court in a long series of decisions. Cf. Federal Trade Comm’n v. Keppel & Bro., 291 U. S. 304, 312; Federal Trade Comm’n v. Raladam Co., 283 U. S. 643, 648; Federal Trade Comm’n v. Cratz, 253 U. S. 421. Delegation in such circumstances is born of the necessities of the occasion. The industries of the country are too many and diverse to make it possible for Congress, in respect of matters such as these, to legislate directly with adequate appreciation of varying conditions. Nor is the substance of the power changed because the President may act at the instance of trade or industrial associations having special knowledge of the facts. Their function is strictly advisory; it is the imprimatur of the President that begets the quality of law. Doty v. Love, ante; p. 64. When the task that is set before one is that of cleaning house, it is prudent as well as usual to take counsel of the dwellers.
But there is another conception of codes of fair competition, their significance and function, which leads to very different consequences, though it is one that is struggling now for recognition and acceptance. By this other conception a code is not to be restricted to the elimination of business practices that would be characterized by general acceptation as oppressive or unfair. It is to include whatever ordinances may be desirable or helpful for the well-being or prosperity of the industry *553affected. In that view, the function of its adoption is not merely negative,.but positive; the planning of improvements as well as the extirpation of abuses. What is fair, as thus conceived, is not something to be contrasted with what is unfair or fraudulent or tricky. The extension becomes as wide as the field of industrial regulation. If that conception shall prevail, anything that Congress may do within the limits of the commerce clause for the betterment of business may be done by the President upon the recommendation of a trade association by calling it a code. This is delegation running riot. No such plenitude of power is susceptible of transfer. The statute, however, aims at nothing less, as one can learn both from its terms and from the administrative practice under it. Nothing less is aimed at by the code now submitted to our scrutiny.
The code does not confine itself to the suppression of methods of competition that would be classified as unfair according to accepted business standards or accepted norms of ethics. It sets up a comprehensive body of rules to promote the welfare of the industry, if not the welfare of the nation, without reference to standards, ethical or commercial, that could be known or predicted in advance of its adoption. One of the new rules, the source of ten counts in the indictment, is aimed at an established practice, not unethical or oppressive, the practice of selective buying. Many others could be instanced as open to the same objection if the sections of the code were to be examined one by one. The process of dissection will not be traced in all its details. Enough at this time to state what it reveals. Even if the statute itself had fixed the meaning of fair competition by way of contrast with practices that are oppressive or unfair, the code outruns the bounds of the authority conferred. What is excessive is not sporadic or superficial. It is deep-seated and per*554vasive. The licit and illicit sections are so combined and welded as to be incapable of severance without destructive mutilation.
But there is another objection, far-reaching and incurable, aside from any defect of unlawful delegation.
If this code had been adopted by Congress itself, and not by the President on the advice of an industrial association, it would even then be void unless authority to adopt it is included in the grant of power “ to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several states.” United States Constitution, Art. I, § 8, Clause 3.
I find no authority in that grant for the regulation of wages and hours of labor in the intrastate transactions that make up the defendants’ business. As to this feature of the case little can be added to the opinion of the court. There is a view of causation that would obliterate the distinction between what is national and what -is local in the activities of commerce. Motion at the outer rim is communicated perceptibly, though minutely, to recording instruments at the center. A society such as ours “is an elastic medium which transmits all tremors throughout its territory; the only question is of their size.” Per Learned Hand, J., in the court below. The law is not indifferent to considerations of degree. Activities local in their immediacy do not become interstate and national because of distant repercussions. What is near and what is distant may at times be uncertain. Cf. Chicago Board of Trade v. Olsen, 262 U. S. 1. There is no penumbra of uncertainty obscuring judgment here. To find immediacy or directness here is to find it almost everywhere. If centripetal forces are to be isolated to the exclusion of the forces that oppose and counteract them, there will be an end to our federal system.
To take from this code the provisions as to wages and the hours of labor is to destroy it altogether. If a trade or an industry is so predominantly local as to be exempt *555from regulation by the Congress in respect of matters such as these, there can be no “ code ” for it at all. This is clear from the provisions of § 7a of the Act with its explicit disclosure of the statutory scheme. Wages and the hours of labor are essential features of the plan, its very bone and sinew. There is no opportunity in such circumstances for the severance of the infected parts in the hope of saving the remainder. A code collapses utterly with bone and sinew gone.
I am authorized to state that Mr. Justice Stone joins in this opinion.