Court Opinion

ID: 9473238
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:23:32.470498+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:43:24.088048
License: Public Domain

STERN, District Judge,
concurring:
The question is not whether the Agency’s position was supported by substantial evidence. It was not. The issue is whether there was a reasonable basis — substantial justification — to litigate that question. The misfortune here is semantic. The two tests, one for prevailing on the merits, and the other for awarding counsel fees, use similar language: “substantial evidence,” “substantially justified.” But one test refers to a burden of proof, and the other to the reasonableness of litigating. If we keep this difference squarely in mind, I believe that much of the confusion evaporates. Moreover, with all due respect to Congressman Kastenmeier, I do not see how it is even possible to merge these two very different tests. One determines the outcome. The other determines the justifiability of having litigated to reach that outcome.
Chief Judge Aldisert’s appeal for rationality and predictability is timely and welcome. The need for clarity and certainty in appellate decisionmaking is too obvious to trial judges, lawyers and potential litigants to warrant embellishment from me. But timely, too, is the reminder that the Congressional Record is no place to seek clarity or certainty in the hunt for the congressional will. It is well known that the Congressmen and Senators reserve to themselves the right to remove from the Record the words they actually said to one another before the passage of legislation, and to add into the Record — after the passage of the bill — words that were never said at all. *971We in the courts and everyone in the country do not have a fair chance to do what the Congress says it wants us to do, because we can simply never be sure they said the things they say they said.