Court Opinion

ID: 9419350
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:48:59.28866+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:42:05.890523
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Douglas,
dissenting:
While I am in substantial agreement with the views expressed by Mr. Justice Frankfurter, there are a few words I desire to add on one phase of the case.
I agree with the Court that if, as we held in the Sanders case (309 U. S. 470), a person financially injured by *265the grant of a license has a standing to appeal, so does one whose station will suffer from electrical interference if the license is issued. I expressed my doubts, however, in Scripps-Howard Radio v. Federal Communications Commission, 316 U. S. 4, 20-21, whether Congress endowed private litigants with the power to vindicate the public interest when it gave the right to appeal under § 402 (b) to a person “aggrieved or whose interests are adversely affected” by a decision of the Commission. I also expressed my concern in that case with the constitutionality of a statutory scheme which allowed one who showed no invasion of a private right to call on the courts to review an order of the Commission. See Muskrat v. United States, 219 U. S. 346. But if we accept as constitutionally valid a system of judicial review invoked by a private person who has no individual substantive right to protect but who has standing only as a representative of the public interest,1 then I think we must be exceedingly scrupulous to see to it that his interest in the matter is substantial and immediate. Otherwise we will not only permit the administrative process to be clogged by judicial review; we will most assuredly run afoul of the constitutional requirement of case or controversy. Federal Radio Commission v. General Electric Co., 281 U. S. 464.
Any actual controversy which may now be present in this case is between KOA and the Commission. Any controversy which existed between WHDH and the Commission has come to an end. United States v. Alaska S. S. Co., 253 U. S. 113, 116. The interest, if any, of the appellant KOA is the interest of a private person and accordingly must be measured in terms of private injury. *266That interest must be substantial and immediate if the standard of the statute and if the constitutional requirements of case or controversy, as interpreted by the Sanders and the Scripps-Howard cases, are to be satisfied. It is necessary to show in effect that KOA has sustained or is about to sustain some direct and substantial injury (see Massachusetts v. Mellon, 262 U. S. 447, 488)— an injury which for the purpose of this case must result from electrical interference. The Sanders case and the Scripps-Howard case do not dispense with that requirement. They merely hold that an appellant has his case decided in light of the standards of the public interest, not by the criteria which give him a standing to appeal.
I do not understand that the opinion of the Court takes a contrary view. It only holds on this phase of the case that KOA made an adequate showing under § 402 (b). I disagree with that conclusion.

 Referred to as a sort of King’s proctor by Edgerton, J., in Colorado Radio Corp. v. Federal Communications Commission, 73 App. D. C. 225, 118 F. 2d 24, 28; and as “private Attorney Generals” by Frank, J., in Associated Industries v. Ickes, 134 F. 2d 694.