Court Opinion

ID: 9456136
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:43:01.539061+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:51.549478
License: Public Domain

FAIRCHILD, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent from the portion of the decision which holds that judicial review of the decision to institute the administrative proceeding is appropriate to test the allegation that one commissioner failed to exercise discretion when he voted to issue the complaint. I agree that Jewel’s other challenges are not to be considered by a court at this stage.
The relevant statute says, “Whenever the commission * * * shall have reason to believe that any person is violating [provisions of the act], it shall issue * * * a complaint.”1 It is clear that the commission is to act as a body. In this instance there were three votes in favor of a complaint and two against. Jewel seeks to impeach the resulting decision of the commission by showing that one of the three votes was cast under a mistaken belief as to the scope of the discretion which might be exercised.
I would hold inappropriate judicial inquiry into the state of mind or reasoning process of an individual commissioner in order to test the validity of his vote.
Doubtless all would now agree that such inquiry is not to be accomplished by interrogation of administrative officers after the fact.2
In this case, however, several commissioners saw fit to make statements in connection with their respective votes. Although reference to contemporaneous statements is less objectionable in some respects than interrogation after the fact, I do not believe this difference provides a justification.
Apparently the commissioners who voted not to issue the complaint took the position that the practices under consideration were not against the public interest even if they were literally subject to the proscription of Section 2(c) of the Clayton Act.3 These commissioners believe that in such circumstances the commission has the discretion to withhold a complaint. Answering that view, Commissioner MacIntyre said, in part, “Congress did not leave it to the discretion of the Commission to decide as a matter of policy, whether to enforce Section 2 (c) of the Clayton Act where it has ‘reason to believe’ that the statute is being violated.” There is nothing in his statement to indicate that he would have voted against issuance of the complaint had he felt differently on this point.
It may be arguable that Commissioner MacIntyre’s statement of the law was in error, but under these circumstances I can see no sufficient justification for *1162stalling the administrative proceeding while a court explores the legal theory. And assuming that it is ultimately determined that the proceeding has merit, I think that, although the administrative process would then have been exhausted, there would be no justification for judicial inquiry into the soundness of Commissioner MacIntyre’s expressed view.
Our attention has not been called to any decisions in an entirely analogous situation where a court has reviewed the vote of one member of a body in order to decide whether such vote and the action it supported was a nullity. A guide to general policy against such review is found in the principle that courts do not probe the minds of administrative officers to determine whether they read or understood the evidence before the agency.4 “An institutional decision * * * is a decision made by an organization and not by an individual * * 5
Wilson v. United States 6 and United States ex rel. Accardi v. Shaughnessy 7 involved situations which were different in respects I consider significant.
Wilson was an appeal from a conviction for contempt of Congress. One step required by statute in the institution of the prosecution was certification of the matter by the Speaker of the House to the United States Attorney. The conviction was set aside because, although the Speaker had certified the matter after it was presented to him by the committee in question, it was clear that he concluded he had no discretion about doing so. One significant difference is that the official action reviewed in Wilson was the act of an individual officer rather than the vote of a member of a body which acted as an entity. The other was that the court found that the interposition of the Speaker’s discretion was designed by Congress so that the decision to prosecute would not be made by the particular committee which the witness had presumably insulted.
Accardi did involve a decision of a board, held invalid because of failure to exercise discretion. The decision was the final disposition and seriously affected the rights of the individual involved. In any event the Court did not perform the type of review of the position of an individual member of the board which Jewel seeks here.
In a sense a part of the difference between our case and the two other just mentioned is a matter of degree. In my opinion the legal issue of the scope of discretion in this context is of much too little real significance to justify dissecting the votes of the majority of the commission.

. 15 U.S.C. § 21(b).

. United States v. Morgan (1941), 313 U.S. 409, 422, 61 S.Ct. 999, 85 L.Ed. 1429.

. 15 U.S.C. § 13(c).

. 2 Davis, Administrative Law Treatise, ' § 11.05, pp. 57-62.

. Ibid., p. 36.

. (1966), 125 U.S.App.D.C. 153, 369 F.2d 198.

. (1954), 347 U.S. 260, 74 S.Ct. 499, 98 L.Ed. 681.