Court Opinion

ID: 9427025
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:19:29.673846+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:04.563047
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Powell,
concurring.
If the constitutional validity of § 307 (b) of the Clean Air Act had been raised by petitioner, I think it would have merited serious consideration. This section limits judicial review to the filing of a petition in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit within 30 days from the date of the promulgation by the Administrator of an emission standard. No notice is afforded a party who may be subject to criminal prosecution other than publication of the Administrator’s action in the Federal Register.1 The Act in *290this respect is similar to the preclusion provisions of the Emergency Price Control Act before the Court in Yakus v. United States, 321 U. S. 414 (1944), and petitioner may have thought the decision in that case effectively foreclosed a due process challenge in the present case.
Although I express no considered judgment, I think Yakus is at least arguably distinguishable. The statute there came before the Court during World War II, and it can be viewed as a valid exercise of the war powers of Congress under Art. I, § 8, of the Constitution. Although the opinion of Mr. Chief Justice Stone is not free from ambiguity, there is language emphasizing that the price controls imposed by the Congress were a “war emergency measure.” Indeed, the Government argued that the statute should be upheld under the war powers authority of Congress. Brief for United States in Yakus v. United States, O. T. 1943, No. 374, p. 35. As important as environmental concerns are to the country, they are not comparable — in terms of an emergency justifying the shortcutting of normal due process rights — to the need for national mobilization in wartime of economic as well as military activity.
The 30-day limitation on judicial review imposed by the Clean Air Act would afford precariously little time for many affected persons even if some adequate method of notice were afforded. It also is totally unrealistic to assume that more than a fraction of the persons and entities affected by a regulation — especially small contractors scattered across the country — would have knowledge of its promulgation or familiarity with or access to the Federal Register. Indeed, following Yakus, and apparently concerned by Mr. Justice Rutledge’s *291eloquent dissent, Congress amended the most onerous features of the Emergency Price Control Act.2
1 join the Court’s opinion with the understanding that it implies no view as to the constitutional validity of the preclusion provisions of § 307 (b) in the context of a criminal prosecution.

 Section, 112 (b) (1) (B) of the Act requires the Administrator to publish proposed emission standards and to hold a public hearing before standards *290are promulgated. But there is no more assurance that notice of proposed standards will come to the attention of the thousands of persons and entities affected than that notice of their actual promulgation will. Neither is it realistic to assume that more than a fraction of these persons and entities could afford to follow or participate in the Administrator’s hearing.

 See 321 U. S., at 460 (Rutledge, J., dissenting); 58 Stat. 638-640, amending the Emergency Price Control Act of 1942, 56 Stat. 23; L. Jaffe, Judicial Control of Administrative Action 451 (1965).