Court Opinion

ID: 9419995
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:52:26.875922+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:21.549376
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Jackson,
concurring.
I concur in the opinion and result. But the issue here is so related to other problems that I desire to state my grounds.
I would be reluctant to adopt a construction of an Act, such as the Emergency Price Control Act, which would certainly impede its administration unless it were necessary to carry out the intent of Congress or to protect fundamental individual rights.
If the Administrator may not delegate his power to sign subpoenas but must personally sign all subpoenas issued in the process of enforcement throughout the United States, one of two practices would be certain to result. He might sign large batches of blank subpoenas and turn them over to subordinates to be filled in over his signature. Or he might sign batches of subpoenas already made out by subordinates, probably without reading them and certainly without examining the causes for their issuance or *124the scope of the information required. The personal signature of the Administrator on the subpoena under those circumstances is no protection to individual rights.
Of all the subpoenas issued by administrative authority, a very small percentage are contested. The important thing for protection of the individual is that when he does have reasons for resisting obedience he can obtain a hearing. I am in doubt as to whether under this Act and the regulations for its administration a person who has reasons for resisting the subpoena has any administrative review or remedy. But in any event he cannot be punished for contempt until a court order for its enforcement has issued and has been disobeyed.
Enforcement of such subpoenas by the courts is not and should not be automatic. So long as they are subject to full inquiry at this point it does not seem to me important to the individual or inconsistent with the policy of Congress that the subpoena issue by a subordinate of the Administrator. If the courts were to be shorn of their power of independent inquiry before enforcement, and I have thought we were tending that way, cf. dissent in Penfield Co. v. S. E. C., 330 U. S. 585, I should expect Congress to intend greater responsibility at the point of original issue. I concur only because I think adequate judicial safeguards exist.