Court Opinion

ID: 9419965
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:52:20.56267+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:21.349795
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Jackson,
dissenting.
It appears to me that the Court in this case not only ignores findings of fact by the Interstate Commerce Commission contrary to our own oft-repeated pronouncements about the finality of administrative findings, but it also legislates out of the Transportation Act of 1940 at least two specific provisions which Congress put in and departs from the policy laid down in § 1 of the Act. Whether the Congressional law or the Court’s amendments are the better for the country is a complicated problem of policy which, in my conception of our judicial function, I am not privileged to decide.
In the Transportation Act of 1940, 54 Stat. 937, et seq., Congress authorized the Commission to establish through rates by water and rail carriers. It also said, “In the case of a through route, where one of the carriers is a common carrier by water, the Commission shall prescribe such reasonable differentials as it may find to be justified between all-rail rates and the joint rates in connection with such common carrier by water.” § 307 (d). The Court reads this discretionary power out of the statute and holds that the Commission may not establish any differential other than that created by the carriers themselves; that is to say, the only permissible differential is the difference between barge rates and rail rates for the water leg of the through journey.
The statute also says that in the exercise of its rate-making power “the Commission shall give due consideration, among other factors, to the effect of rates upon the movement of traffic by the carrier or carriers for which the rates are prescribed . . . .” § 307 (f). The Com*585mission has done so and finds that a greater differential than that prescribed would create unjust advantages and diversions of traffic. But the Court ignores the effect of what it orders on existing rate structures and on grain-producing regions and shippers other than barge users. It simply writes in “shall not consider” where Congress said “shall consider.”
Because this decision seems to me to deprive the Commission of these discretionary powers to adjust through rates to general shipping conditions and rate structures, I dissent.
Mr. Justice Frankfurter joins in this opinion.