Court Opinion

ID: 9765408
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 04:01:59.136979+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:09.662136
License: Public Domain

CLIFFORD, J.,
concurring.
My vote with the majority opinion is cast with the understanding that in reaching its result, the Court does not at all intend to undermine an extremely important principle, one that forms the basis for the dissent: that the choice among reasonable interpretations of statutes that delegate enforcement and rulemaking power to administrative agencies is for those agencies to make, not for the courts. Post at 222-24. The flip-side of that proposition is equally important: if the legislation, when read with an eye fixed not simply on its language but as well on its underlying background and history, is susceptible of but one meaning, then a contrary meaning attributed to the enactment by the administrative agency responsible for its enforcement must be disregarded.
We tend to use familiar and comfortable expressions like “arbitrary” and “unreasonable” in characterizing administrative interpretation of legislation that courts find is not in keeping with the “plain meaning” of a statute. What we are really driving at is that there is no room for agency interpretation: the act can have only one meaning, and the agency’s reading is just plain wrong.
I am quick to acknowledge that for me, the meaning of taxing statutes does not always leap off the page with the same pellucidity as, say, an act prohibiting careless driving (see N.J.S.A. 30:4-97). So much of the blame for that regrettable *222circumstance as does not repose in my own shortcomings may inhere in the very nature of the subject. Tax law is sometimes arcane. The statutes dealing with it can become elaborate, even baroque — witness the Internal Revenue Code, not much in demand for a quiet afternoon in the hammock. And like Judge Simon Rifkind, “I would no more have the audacity to formulate my own tax return than I would engage in open heart surgery.” See Oakwood at Madison, Inc. v. Township of Madison, 72 N.J. 481, 636 (1977) (concurring opinion) (quoting Rifkind, Are We Asking Too Much of Our Courts?, 15 Judge’s J. 43 (1976)).
So although I have not found the road to decision of this appeal an easy one, I am satisfied that Justice Garibaldi’s opinion persuasively makes the case for but one interpretation of the legislation that we are called on to examine. I therefore join in that opinion, again with the understanding that we are leaving intact the principles set forth at the beginning of this concurrence.