Court Opinion

ID: 9428752
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:24:41.049884+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:15.033925
License: Public Domain

Justice Powell,
with whom The Chief Justice, Justice Rehnquist, and Justice O’Connor join, dissenting.
The Court today holds that Congress intended the federal courts to recognize implied causes of action under five separate provisions of the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA), 7 U. S. C. § 1 et seq: (1976 ed. and Supp IV). The decision rests on two theories. First, the Court relies on fewer than a dozen cases in which the lower federal courts erroneously upheld private rights of action in the years prior to the 1974 amendments to the CEA. Reasoning that these mistaken decisions constituted “the law” in 1974, the Court holds that Congress must be assumed to have endorsed this path of error when it failed to amend certain sections of the CEA in that year. This theory is incompatible with our constitutional separation of powers, and in my view it is without support in logic or in law. Additionally — whether alternatively or cumulatively is unclear — the Court finds that Congress in 1974 “affirmatively” manifested its intent to “preserve” pri*396vate rights of action by adopting particular amendments to the CEA. This finding is reached without even token deference to established tests for discerning congressional intent.
I
In determining whether an “implied cause of action exists under a federal statute, “what must ultimately be determined is whether Congress intended to create the private remedy asserted.” Transamerica Mortgage Advisors, Inc. (TAMA) v. Lewis, 444 U. S. 11, 15-16 (1979). See Middlesex County Sewerage Auth. v. National Sea Clammers Assn., 453 U. S. 1, 13 (1981) (Sea Clammers).1 In these cases private rights of action are asserted under five separate provisions of the CEA — two of them passed initially in 1922, two in 1936, and one adopted for the first time in 1968.2 The Court does *397not argue that Congress in 1922, in 1936, or in 1968, intended to authorize private suits for damages in the federal courts. In 1936 — the year in which the CEA was adopted as the successor statute to the Grain Futures Act3 — Congress did not even provide for federal-court jurisdiction to enforce the CEA.4 And the Court adduces no evidence that congressional views had changed by 1968.
*398If the Court focused its implication inquiry on the intent of the several Congresses that enacted the statutory provisions involved in these cases, it thus is indisputable that the plaintiffs would have no claim. “The dispositive question” in implication cases is whether Congress intended to create the right to sue for damages in federal court. “Having answered that question in the negative, our inquiry [would be] at an end.” TAMA, supra, at 24. See Sea Clammers, supra, at 13.
The Court today asserts its fidelity to these principles but shrinks from their application. It does so in the first instance by invoking a novel legal theory — one that relies on congressional inaction and on erroneous decisions by the lower federal courts. In 1967 a Federal District Court in the Northern District of Illinois upheld the existence of a private right of action under one section of the CEA. Goodman v. H. Hentz & Co., 265 F. Supp. 440 (1967). Relying on state common-law principles set forth in § 286 of the Restatement of Torts (1938), Goodman ruled that the “complete absence of provision for private civil actions in the Commodity Exchange Act,” 265 F. Supp., at 447, was not decisive:
“ ‘Implied rights of action are not contingent upon statutory language which affirmatively indicates that they are intended. On the contrary, they are implied unless the legislation evidences a contrary intention. Brown v. Bullock, D.C., 194 F. Supp. 207, 224, aff'd on other grounds, 2 Cir., 294 F. 2d 415; cited in Wheeldin v. Wheeler, 373 U. S. 647 at 661, 662 . . . (Brennan, J., dissenting).’
“There is no indication in the Commodity Exchange Act that Congress intended not to allow private persons injured by violations access to the federal courts.” Ibid. (emphasis added).
The Court does not dispute that the Goodman court erred. The Goodman court placed primary emphasis on inquiring *399whether Congress had created a regulatory system for the benefit of the plaintiffs’ class. As the court’s citation of the Restatement of Torts made apparent, this inquiry has been thought appropriate for common-law courts of general jurisdiction. But our cases establish that it is not appropriate for federal courts possessed only of limited jurisdiction. On the contrary, we have established that an “argument in favor of implication of a private right of action based on tort principles . . . is entirely misplaced.” Touche Ross & Co. v. Redington, 442 U. S. 560, 568 (1979). “The dispositive question [is] whether Congress intended to create any such [private damages] remedy.” TAMA, 444 U. S., at 24 (emphasis added). The Goodman court did not even ask this question.5
*400About 10 cases — none decided by this Court6 — followed Goodman’s mistake. Seven of these found Goodman dispos-itive without further comment.7 Three remaining cases8 added to Goodman’s analysis only by quoting differing por*401tions of one sentence discussing the CEA’s purpose.9 This single sentence “leaves no doubt that Congress intended to [benefit the named classes of persons by enacting the CEA] .... But whether Congress intended additionally that [the CEA] provisions would be enforced through private litigation is a different question.” TAMA, supra, at 17-18. Because these cases ignore this “different question,” they fail to rectify Goodman’s fundamental legal error — that of basing a finding of an implied cause of action under a federal statute on common-law principles. “There is, of course, ‘no federal general common law.’” Texas Industries, Inc. v. Radcliff Materials, Inc., 451 U. S. 630, 640 (1981), quoting Erie R. Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U. S. 64, 78 (1938).
To the Court, however, this all is irrelevant. The Goodman line may have been wrong. The decisions all may have been rendered by lower federal courts. Goodman nevertheless was “the law” in 1974. Moreover, the Court reasons, Congress must be presumed to have known of Goodman and its progeny, see ante, at 378-382; and it could have changed the law if it did not like it, see ante, at 381-382. Yet Congress, the Court continues, “left intact the statutory provisions under which the federal courts had implied a cause of action.” Ante, at 381. This legislative inaction, the Court concludes, signals a conscious intent to “preserve” the right of action that Goodman mistakenly had created. Ante, at 382. And this unexpressed “affirmative intent” of Congress now is binding on this Court, as well as all other federal courts.10
*402This line of reasoning is inconsistent with fundamental premises of our structure of government. Fewer than a dozen District Courts wrongly create a remedy in damages under the CEA; Congress fails to correct the error; and congressional silence binds this Court to follow the erroneous decisions of the District Courts and Courts of Appeals. The Court today does not say that Goodman was correctly decided. Congress itself surely would reject emphatically the Goodman view that federal courts are free to hold, as a general rule of statutory interpretation, that private rights of action are to be implied unless Congress “evidences a contrary intention.” Yet today’s decision is predicated in major part on this view.
It is not surprising that the Court — having propounded this novel theory that congressional intent can be inferred from its silence, and that legislative inaction should achieve the force of law — would wish to advance an additional basis for its decision.
II
In 1974 Congress rewrote much of the CEA. It did not, however, re-enact or even amend most of the provisions under which the Court today finds implied rights of action. But the Court does not pause over the question how Con*403gress might legislate a right of action merely by remaining silent after the lower federal courts have misstated the law.11 Instead it argues that at least some of the 1974 amendments evidenced an affirmative congressional intent to “preserve” implied rights of action under the CEA. Ante, at 381-382. Fairly read, the evidence fails to sustain this argument.
A
In support of its argument the Court advances no evidence of the kinds generally recognized as most probative of congressional intent. It cites no statutory language stating an intent to preserve judicially created rights. It offers no legislative materials citing Goodman or any of its progeny in approving tones. In the hundreds of pages of Committee hearings and Reports that preceded the 1974 amendments, the Court is unable to discover even a single clear remark to the effect that the 1974 amendments would create or preserve private rights of action.
The Court relies instead on three unrelated additions to the CEA that were adopted by Congress in 1974. First, the Court places weight on the enactment of § 8a(7), 7 U. S. C. § 12a(7), which authorizes the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to supplement the trading regulations established by individual commodity exchanges. Ante, at 384. The accompanying House Report, H. R. Rep. No. 93-975, *404p. 46 (1974), explained that the CFTC needed this power to ensure that the local exchanges would establish adequate safeguards. According to the Report, “attorneys to several boards of trade have been advising the boards to reduce — not expand exchange regulations . . . , since there is a growing body of opinion that failure to enforce the exchange rules is a violation of the Act which will support suits by private litigants.” From this observation the Court purports to infer that Congress must have approved of the Goodman line of cases.
This single quotation, however, is entirely neutral as to approval or disapproval. Moreover, there is persuasive evidence on the face of the statute that Congress did not contemplate a judicial remedy for damages against the exchanges. The 1974 amendments explicitly subjected the exchanges to fines and other sanctions for nonenforcement of their own rules. See § 6b, 7 U. S. C. § 13a. But the statute specifies that fines may not exceed $100,000 per violation, ibid., and that the Commission must determine whether the amount of any fine will impair an exchange’s ability to perform its functions. A private damages action would not be so limited and therefore would expose the exchanges to greater liability than Congress evidently intended.
The second statutory change cited by the Court actually undercuts rather than supports its case. The Court notes that the 1974 Congress enacted two sections creating procedures for reimbursing victims of CEA violations.12 Ante, at *405384-385. In its view these sections evidence a further intent to enhance the availability of relief in damages. Yet the Court suggests no reason why the 1974 Congress would have enacted these duplicative channels for damages recovery if it intended at the same time to approve the implied private damages actions permitted by Goodman.13 Rather, the Court flatly contravenes settled rules for the identification of congressional intent. “[I]t is an elemental canon of statutory construction that where a statute expressly provides a particular remedy or remedies, a court must be chary of reading others into it.” TAMA, 444 U. S., at 19.14 “In the absence *406of strong indicia of a contrary congressional intent, we are compelled to conclude that Congress provided precisely the remedies it considered appropriate.” Sea Clammers, 453 U. S., at 15.
The Court finally relies upon congressional enactment of a so-called jurisdictional saving clause as part of the 1974 amendments:
“Nothing in this section shall supersede or limit the jurisdiction conferred on courts of the United States or any State.” § 201 (amending §2 of the Act), 88 Stat. 1395, codified at 7 U. S. C. §2 (emphasis added).
Ante, at 386-387.
By its terms the saving clause simply is irrelevant to the issue at hand: whether a cause of action should be implied under particular provisions of the CEA. Where judicially cognizable claims do exist, the saving clause makes clear that federal courts retain their jurisdiction. But it neither creates nor preserves any substantive right to sue for damages. And it is settled by our cases that “[t]he source of plaintiffs’ rights must be found, if at all, in the substantive provisions of the . . . Act which they seek to enforce, not in the jurisdictional provision.” Touche Ross & Co. v. Redington, 442 U. S., at 577. Cf. Sea Clammers, supra, at 15-17 (refusing to imply right of action even from a substantive “saving clause”).15
*407B
Despite its imaginative use of other sources, the Court neglects the only unambiguous evidence of Congress’ intent respecting private actions for civil damages under the CEA. That evidence is a chart that appears in the record of Senate Committee hearings.16 This chart compares features of four proposed bills with the “Present Commodities Exchange Act.” It evidently was prepared by the expert Committee staff advising the legislators who considered the 1974 amendments.
The chart is detailed. It occupies five pages of the hearing record. Comparing the feature of “civil money penalties” between the different proposed bills, however, the chart does not list “implied damages actions” under the existing Act. Rather, it says there are “none.” Neither does the chart make any reference to implied private damages actions under any of the four proposed amending bills.
Under these circumstances, the most that the Court fairly can claim to have shown is that the 1974 Congress did not dis*408approve Goodman and its progeny. There simply is no persuasive evidence of affirmative congressional intent to recognize rights through the enactment of statutory law, even under the Court’s unprecedented theory of congressional ratification by silence of judicial error.
I — H HH HH
The Court’s holding today may reflect its view of desirable policy. If so, this view is doubly mistaken.
First, modern federal regulatory statutes tend to be exceedingly complex. Especially in this context, courts should recognize that intricate policy calculations are necessary to decide when new enforcement measures are desirable additions to a particular regulatory structure. Judicial creation of private rights of action is as likely to disrupt as to assist the functioning of the regulatory schemes developed by Congress. See, e. g., Universities Research Assn., Inc. v. Coutu, 450 U. S. 754, 782-784 (1981).
Today’s decision also is disquieting because of its implicit view of the judicial role in the creation of federal law. The Court propounds a test that taxes the legislative branch with a duty to respond to opinions of the lower federal courts. The penalty for silence is the risk of having those erroneous judicial opinions imputed to Congress itself — on the basis of its presumptive knowledge of the “contemporary legal context.” Ante, at 379. Despite the Court’s allusion to the lawmaking powers of courts at common law, see ante, at 374-377, this view is inconsistent with the theory and structure of our constitutional government.
For reasons that I have expressed before, I remain convinced that “we should not condone the implication of any private right of action from a federal statute absent the most compelling evidence that Congress in fact intended such an action to exist.” Cannon v. University of Chicago, 441 U. S. 677, 749 (1979) (Powell, J., dissenting).17 Here the *409evidence falls far short of this constitutionally appropriate standard.
Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.
APPENDIX TO OPINION OF POWELL, J., DISSENTING

Commodity Futures Commission Act: Hearings on S. 2485, S. 2578, S. 2837 and H. R. 13113 before the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, 93d Cong., 2d Sess., 194 (1974).

 As the Court correctly observes, ante, at 377, reliance on congressional intent as dispositive of implication questions was at least implicit in the four-pronged inquiry mandated by Cort v. Ash, 422 U. S. 66 (1975). The Cort test explicitly called for inquiries into whether plaintiffs were seen by Congress as especial beneficiaries of a statutory scheme, whether an implied cause of action would be consistent with legislative purpose, and whether the asserted cause of action traditionally was relegated to state law. See id., at 78. But these factors all are important primarily as indi-ces of congressional intent. As we recently explained in Texas Industries, Inc. v. Radcliff Materials, Inc., 451 U. S. 630, 639 (1981), “Congressional intent may be discerned by looking to ... , e. g., the identity of the class for whose benefit the statute was enacted, the overall legislative scheme, and the traditional role of the states in providing relief.”

 The five sections are § 4a, 7 U. S. C. § 6a; § 4b, 7 U. S. C. § 6b; § 5a(8), 7 U. S. C. § 7a(8); § 5(d), 7 U. S. C. § 7(d); and § 9(b), 7 U. S. C. § 13(b).
Though subsequently amended, §§ 5(d) and 9(b) were both adopted as part of the Grain Futures Act of 1922. See 42 Stat. 1000, 1003. Section 5(d) authorizes the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to designate as a “contract market” (and thus permit trading upon) a commodities exchange only when the exchange’s governing board “provides for the prevention of manipulation of prices and the cornering of any commodity *397by the dealers or operators” upon the exchange. Its terms suggest no intent to confer a right of action on any class of aggrieved persons.
Section 9(b) — as are §§ 4a and 4b — is a criminal provision. It establishes that “[i]t shall be a felony” for “any person” to manipulate commodity prices, to corner commodities, to deliver false crop or market information, or to omit or misstate facts to the CFTC. Before today the Court had established that private rights of action generally would not be inferred from criminal prohibitions. See California v. Sierra Club, 451 U. S. 287, 294 (1981); Cannon v. University of Chicago, 441 U. S. 677, 690-693, n. 13 (1979).
Sections 4a and 4b were adopted as part of the Commodity Exchange Act of 1936. See 49 Stat. 1492,1493. Section 4a provides that it is illegal for any person to buy, sell, or hold positions in excess of limitations established by the CFTC. Section 4b declares it unlawful for designated persons who make commodity futures contracts for other persons to cheat, defraud, deceive, or make false statements to such other persons. Sections 4a and 4b are similar to § 206 of the Investment Advisers Act of 1940. See 15 U. S. C. § 80b-6. We have held explicitly that the language of § 206 does not create an implied damages action. Transamerica Mortgage Advisors, Inc. (TAMA) v. Lewis, 444 U. S. 11, 16, n. 6, 24 (1979).
Section 5a(8), 7 U. S. C. § 7a(8), is traceable to the 1968 amendments. It directs that each “contract market” shall enforce its own approved rules relating to contract and trading requirements. Section 5a(8) resembles the language of 15 U. S. C. §78q(a) (1970 ed.), that we found to create no implied private damages action under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Touche Ross & Co. v. Redington, 442 U. S. 560, 562, n. 2, 579 (1979).

 The structural history of the CEA and its antecedents is ably summarized by the Court and requires no further recounting here. See ante, at 360-367.

 Congress had included jurisdictional provisions under several securities laws preceding enactment of the 1936 amendments to the CEA, thus evidencing that it knew quite well how to authorize private suits for civil damages when it wished to do so. TAMA, supra, at 20-21.

 The Court correctly observes that the effect of Cort v. Ash was to “modify [this Court’s] approach to the question whether a federal statute includes a private right of action.” Ante, at 377 (emphasis added). As exemplifying a previous approach the Court quotes Texas & Pacific R. Co. v. Rigsby, 241 U. S. 33, 39 (1916): “A disregard of the command of the statute is a wrongful act, and where it results in damage to one of the class for whose especial benefit the statute was enacted, the right to recover the damages from the party in default is implied . . . .” The Court does not appear to argue, however, that Rigsby mandated the Goodman decision. Nor does Rigsby somehow validate Goodman as a correct statement of the law as it was in 1967. As is clear from a reading of the opinion, Rigsby stated not so much a rule of substantive law as a maxim of statutory construction. Rigsby did not question that the creation of rights of action was a congressional function. On the contrary, in Rigsby the Court devoted most of its opinion, not to the question whether a remedy could be “implied” under the statute, but to the question whether it was within the constitutional power of Congress to impose tort liability of the kind asserted. See 241 U. S., at 40-43 (asserting that plaintiff will be entitled to recover “unless it be beyond the power of Congress under the commerce clause of the Constitution to create such a liability”) (emphasis added).
Moreover, although the Rigsby approach made the denial of a damages action “the exception rather than the rule,” ante, at 375, the Court even during the Rigsby period refused to recognize implied remedies where the evidence — even with the aid of the maxim — failed to indicate that Congress had intended to create them. See, e. g., T. I. M. E. Inc. v. United States, 359 U. S. 464, 474 (1959) (“The question is, of course, one of statutory in*400tent”); National Railroad Passenger Corp. v. National Assn. of Railroad Passengers, 414 U. S. 453, 457-458 (1974) (Amtrak) (“It goes without saying . . . that the inference of such a private cause of action not otherwise authorized by the statute must be consistent with the evident legislative intent. . .”).

 One of these cases, Deaktor v. L. D. Schreiber & Co., 479 F. 2d 529, 534 (CA7), rev'd on other grounds sub nom. Chicago Mercantile Exchange v. Deaktor, 414 U. S. 113 (1973), did come before this Court. But the petition for certiorari included no “implication” question, and our per curiam opinion decided the case on primary jurisdiction grounds. Reversing the decision of the Court of Appeals, which had upheld the jurisdiction of the District Court to entertain a private suit for damages under the CEA, we held that “the Deaktor plaintiffs, who . . . alleged violations of the CEA and the rules of the [Chicago Mercantile] Exchange, should be routed in the first instance to the [Commodity Exchange Commission] whose administrative functions appear to encompass adjudication of the kind of substantive claims made against the Exchange in this case.” Id., at 115.
The Court today notes that Deaktor “did not question the availability of a private remedy under the CEA.” Ante, at 381. But neither does Deaktor exert any precedential force on an issue that the parties did not present and the Court did not decide. In any event, our disposition of the Deaktor case — referring the matters complained of to the Commodity Exchange Commission — at least is consistent with a view that plaintiffs enjoy no private rights of action in the courts, but that they are entitled to seek administrative relief through the procedures made available under the CEA.

 See Hecht v. Harris, Upham & Co., 283 F. Supp. 417, 437 (ND Cal. 1968), modified on other grounds, 430 F. 2d 1202 (CA9 1970); Anderson v. Francis I. duPont & Co., 291 F. Supp. 705, 710 (Minn. 1968); Booth v. Peavey Co. Commodity Services, 430 F. 2d 132, 133 (CA8 1970) (alternative holding); McCurnin v. Kohlmeyer & Co., 340 F. Supp. 1338, 1343 (ED La. 1972); Johnson v. Arthur Espey, Shearson, Hammill & Co., 341 F. Supp. 764, 766 (SDNY 1972); Gould v. Barnes Brokerage Co., 345 F. Supp. 294 (ND Tex. 1972) (by implication); Arnold v. Bache & Co., 377 F. Supp. 61, 65-66 (MD Pa. 1973).

 See United Egg Producers v. Bauer International Corp., 311 F. Supp. 1375, 1384 (SDNY 1970); Seligson v. New York Produce Exchange, 378 F. Supp. 1076, 1084 (SDNY 1974), aff’d, 550 F. 2d 762 (CA2) (no explicit discussion of propriety of implying cause of action under the CEA), cert. *401denied sub nom. Miller v. New York Produce Exchange, 434 U. S. 823 (1977); Deaktor v. L. D. Schreiber & Co., supra, at 534.

 “The fundamental purpose of the Commodity Exchange Act ‘is to ensure fair practice and honest dealing on the commodity exchanges and to provide a measure of control over those forms of speculative activity which too often demoralize the markets to the injury of producers and consumers and the exchanges themselves.’ ” Campbell, Trading in Futures under the Commodity Exchange Act, 26 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 215, 223 (1958), quoting H. R. Rep. No. 421, 74th Cong., 1st Sess., 1 (1935).

 If Congress must be presumed to have known of the lower court deci*402sions in the Goodman line, it would seem Congress also should be presumed to have known of this Court’s 1974 decision in Amtrak, supra. Amtrak properly directed that the implication of rights of action must adhere to congressional intent. See 414 U. S., at 457-458. More importantly, Amtrak also would have alerted Congress that its provision of a comprehensive scheme of administrative remedies — and the 1974 amendments to the CEA admittedly provided such a scheme, see ante, at 384-385—would give rise to an inference of intent to preclude alternative modes of relief. See 414 U. S., at 458 (“[W]hen legislation expressly provides a particular remedy or remedies, courts should not expand the coverage of the statute to subsume other remedies”). The Court does not explain the relationship of Amtrak to Congress’ presumptive knowledge of “the ‘contemporary legal context’ in which [it] legislated in 1974.” Ante, at 381.

 The Court opinion, see ante, at 381-382, and n. 66, cites cases in which we previously have held that “Congress is presumed to be aware of an administrative or judicial interpretation of a statute and to adopt that interpretation when it re-enacts a statute without change . . . .” Lorillard v. Pons, 434 U. S. 575, 580-581 (1978). Here, however, Congress did not reenact the provisions in issue in 1974; the relevant 1974 amendments altered existing language, but without actively readopting the terms that were left unchanged. It also is significant that the statute involved in Lorillard expressly authorized private civil actions. Id., at 579, n. 6. The Court cites no case in which a presumption of congressional awareness was based on erroneous lower court decisions.

 The added reimbursement procedures are of two types. First, the 1974 Congress added § 5a(11) to the Act. See 88 Stat. 1401. This provision requires commodity exchanges to “provide a fair and equitable procedure through arbitration or otherwise for the settlement of customers’ claims and grievances against any member or employee [of the exchange]”(emphasis added). The procedure applies only to claims involving less than $15,000. This process evidently is designed to encourage the *405speedy and voluntary resolution of smaller customer disputes at the exchange level.
Second, the 1974 amendments'included a new § 14 that expressly authorized damages actions. See 88 Stat. 1393-1394. This adjudicatory procedure apparently is designed to resolve larger disputes or smaller § 5a(11) disputes that are not settled. The actions are brought before the Commission rather than before an exchange. There is no limit on the amount of damages that may be awarded. The Commission’s judgments are enforceable by actions in federal district court. 7 U. S. C. § 18.

 Instead of attempting to explain this overlap between the express and the implied CEA remedies, the Court points to the limitations Congress placed on its express remedies as compared to an implied Goodman action. See ante, at 384-385, and n. 75. The Court suggests that Congress’ scheme is wanting as a tool for compensation and deterrence. The opposite inference would be more reasonable. One normally would assume that Congress took care to prescribe precisely those remedies compatible with its view of the costs and benefits of different modes of regulation. “When a statute limits a thing to be done in a particular mode, it includes the negative of any other mode.” Botany Worsted Mills v. United States, 278 U. S. 282, 289 (1929). See Sea Clammers, 453 U. S. 1, 14-15 (1981).

 “The presumption that a remedy was deliberately omitted from a statute is strongest when Congress has enacted a comprehensive legislative scheme including an integrated system of procedures for enforcement. . . . The judiciary may not, in the face of such comprehensive legislative schemes, fashion new remedies that might upset carefully considered legislative programs.” Northwest Airlines, Inc. v. Transport Workers, 451 *406U. S. 77, 97 (1981). See also Sea Clammers, supra, at 13-15; Touche Ross & Co. v. Redington, 442 U. S., at 574; Amtrak, 414 U. S., at 458.
In an effort to show that these reparation procedures were designed to supplement implied rights of action, the Court reviews comments made by hearing witnesses that allude to the existence of “court” actions. Ante, at 385-386, and nn. 76-80. These references, however, fairly must be characterized as ambiguous.

 In attaching substantive significance to the jurisdictional saving provision, the Court relies heavily on an isolated remark by Senator Clark. See ante, at 386. Senator Clark is not identified as a legislative draftsman, *407floor manager, or committee chairman. Cf. Ernst & Ernst v. Hochfelder, 425 U. S. 185, 204, n. 24 (1976) (“Remarks of this kind made in the course of legislative debate or hearings other than by persons responsible for the preparation or the drafting of a bill are entitled to little weight”). Moreover, the Court advances no evidence that even Senator Clark was thinking of Goodman actions when he expressed his concern to preserve existing state and federal jurisdiction. It is equally plausible that he was thinking primarily of federal antitrust jurisdiction and state-court jurisdiction over contract claims. These were, in fact, precisely the grounds on which three other witnesses, appearing before the same Senate Committee as Senator Clark, criticized the language of an earlier draft of the saving clause. See Hearings on S. 2485, S. 2578, S. 2837 and H. R. 13113 before the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, 93d Cong., 2d Sess., 259-260 (1974) (Chairman Rodino of the House Committee on the Judiciary); id., at 663-664 (Deputy Assistant Attorney General Clearwaters); id., at 667-668 (Director Halverson of the Bureau of Competition, Federal Trade Commission).

 The relevant portion of this chart is attached as an Appendix to this opinion.

 There can be little doubt that failure to adhere to this standard will encourage the discovery of private causes of action of which Congress never *409dreamed. The escalating recourse to damages suits has placed a severe and growing burden on the lower federal courts. My research — accomplished mostly through a computer search of cases in the federal reporters — indicates that in the past decade there have been at least 243 reported Court of Appeals opinions and 515 District Court opinions dealing with the existence of implied causes of action under various federal statutes. It is time federal courts discontinued the speculative creation of damages liability where the legislative branch has chosen to remain silent.