Court Opinion

ID: 9419149
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:46:42.088229+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:15.634727
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Douglas,
dissenting.
In my opinion the judgment should be reversed.
The Commission found that respondent’s “use of chance assortments in the sale and distribution of its candies in Illinois has a direct and powerful burdensome effect upon interstate commerce in candies from other states to the State of Illinois, and gives respondent an undue and unreasonable preference over competitors located in other states.” The validity of that finding and of the Commission’s conclusion that respondent’s practices constitute unfair methods of competition are not in issue. The only question presented by this petition for certiorari is whether respondent’s practices constitute unfair methods of competition “in commerce” within the meaning of § 5 (a) of the Federal Trade Commission Act.
*356I think they do.
Unfair competition involves not only an offender but also a victim. Here some of the victims of the unfair methods of competition are engaged in interstate commerce. The fact that the acts of the offender are intrastate is immaterial. The purpose of the Act is to protect interstate commerce against specified types of injury. So far as the jurisdiction of the Commission is concerned, it is the existence of that injury to interstate commerce not the interstate or intrastate character of the conduct causing the injury which is important. An unfair method of competition is “in” interstate commerce not only when it has an interstate origin but also when it has a direct interstate impact. Respondent is “using” unfair methods of competition “in” interstate commerce when the direct effect of its conduct is to burden, stifle, or impair that commerce.
Under the Sherman Act (26 Stat. 209) a contract or conspiracy may be “in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States” even though the acts or conduct are intrastate. Swift & Co. v. United States, 196 U. S. 375, 397; United States v. Patten, 226 U. S. 525, 541-543; Standard Oil Co. v. United States, 283 U. S. 163, 168-169. Sec. 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act is “supplementary” to the Sherman Act. Federal Trade Comm’n v. Raladam Co., 283 U. S. 643, 647. Like the Sherman Act it seeks “to protect the public from abuses arising in the course of competitive interstate and foreign trade. . . . The paramount aim of the act is the protection of the public from the evils likely to result from the destruction of competition or the restriction of it in a substantial degree.” Federal Trade Comm’n v. Raladam Co., supra, pp. 647-648. And as this Court said in Federal Trade Comm’n v. Beech-Nut Packing Co., 257 U. S. 441, 453, the declaration of public policy contained in the Sherman Act is “to be considered in determining what are unfair methods of competition, which *357the Federal Trade Commission is empowered to condemn and suppress.” For the Federal Trade Commission Act “undoubtedly was aimed at all the familiar methods of law violation which prosecutions under the Sherman Act had disclosed.” Federal Trade Comm’n v. Keppel & Bro., 291 U. S. 304, 310.
That history, of course, does not give us license to disregard plain and unambiguous limitations on the power of the Commission. But it does admonish us to construe one of a series of legislative acts dealing with a common or related problem in light of the integrated statutory scheme. See United States v. Hutcheson, ante, p. 219. It warns us not to whittle away administrative power by resolving an ambiguity against the existence of that power where the full arsenal of that power is necessary to cope with the evil at hand. The evil here is direct, injurious discrimination against interstate commerce. The Commission has issued orders against some 120 of respondent’s competitors prohibiting them from selling chance assortments of candy in interstate commerce. Under this decision respondent may continue to use this same unfair method of competition to increase its business at the expense of those who sell in interstate commerce and who are not free to employ the same methods in self-defense. I think the Act, an exercise by Congress of its commerce power, should be interpreted to protect interstate commerce not to permit discrimination against it.
Such an approach was used in the Shreveport case (234 U. S. 342) to give the Interstate Commerce Commission control over intrastate rates which injuriously affected, through an unreasonable discrimination, traffic that was interstate. That result was reached though the Act expressly denied the Commission any jurisdiction where the “transportation” was “wholly within one State.” This Court said (234 U. S. at p. 358) that those *358words had “appropriate reference to exclusively intrastate traffic, separately considered; to the regulation of domestic commerce, as such. The powers conferred by the act are not thereby limited where interstate commerce itself is involved.” The interrelation between the intrastate and interstate activities in the instant case is hardly less intimate than in the Shreveport case. The fact that the nexus here is economic and not physical is inconsequential. In this case as in the other the problem is the existence of administrative authority to provide effective protection of interstate commerce against discrimination. In the Shreveport case statutory doubts were resolved so as to strengthen the administrative process even against the claim that thereby the state authorities would be “shorn of those powers which alone can justify their existence.” Similar arguments should not deter us from being tolerant of an asserted power, admittedly constitutional, to deal effectively with the realities of economic interdependence.
The fact that a clarifying amendment to the Act was sought which would have removed the doubts as to the meaning of “in commerce” is not material except to the extent that it shows that doubts existed. It does not aid in resolving those doubts. To be sure, recent statutes dealing with other fields have removed such doubts by explicit provisions. But they are of little aid in interpreting an earlier act in its own legislative setting. See United States v. Stewart, 311 U. S. 60, 69. And as to the charge that for . a quarter of a century the Commission made no claim to such a power, two answers may be made. In the first place, as early as 1921, the Commission urged that the doctrine of the Shreveport case permitted an interpretation of the Act which would give it control over certain intrastate activities. Canfield Oil Co. v. Federal Trade Comm’n, 274 F. 571; Hankin Jurisdiction of the Federal Trade Commission, 12 Calif. *359L. Rev. 179, 197, et seq. Although the question does not appear to have been definitely settled, in 1926 the Commission received some support for its view. See Chamber of Commerce v. Federal Trade Comm’n, 13 F. 2d 673, 684. Cf. American Can Co. v. Ladoga Canning Co., 44 F. 2d 763, 770-771. But in 1939 that power was denied. California Rice Industry v. Federal Trade Comm’n, 102 F. 2d 716, 723. Nonuse of the asserted power clearly cannot be inferred from that record. In the second place, it would not be relevant if this power did lay dormant for years. Mere nonuse does not subtract from power which has been granted. The host of practical reasons which may defer exhaustion of administrative powers lies in the realm of policy. From that delay we can hardly infer that the need did not or does not exist.
Mr. Justice Black and Mr. Justice Reed join in this dissent.