Court Opinion

ID: 9419061
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:45:15.971517+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:14.845808
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Roberts,
dissenting.
I regret that I cannot concur in the Court’s disposition of these cases. I find it unnecessary to consider whether the order complied with the terms of the Act or whether the Act or the order deprived the appellees of their property without due process. I am of opinion that the Act unconstitutionally delegates legislative power to the Secretary of Agriculture.
Valid delegation is limited to the execution of a law. If power is delegated to make a law, or to refrain from making it, or to determine what the law shall command or prohibit, the delegation ignores and transgresses the Constitutional division of power between the legislative and the executive branches of the government.
In my view the Act vests in the Secretary authority to determine, first, what of a number of enumerated com*604modities shall be regulated; second, in what areas the commodity shall be regulated; third, the period of regulation, and, fourth, the character of regulation to be imposed; and, for these reasons, cannot be sustained.
The statute is an attempted delegation to an executive officer of authority to impose regulations within supposed limits and according to supposed standards so vague as in effect to invest him with uncontrolled power of legislation. Congress has not directed that the marketing of milk shall be regulated. Congress has not directed that regulation shall be imposed throughout the United States or in any specified portion thereof. It has léft the choice of both locations and areas to the Secretary. Congress has not provided that regulation anywhere shall become effective at any specified date, or remain effective for any specified period. Congress has permitted such a variety of forms of regulation as to invest the Secretary with a choice of discrete systems each having the characteristics of an independent and complete statute. ■
Section 8c (2) provides that the Secretary may make orders in respect of eight specified agricultural products. It embodies no directions as to the specific conditions which shall move him to issue orders affecting each of the named commodities. The same section permits the promulgation of orders applicable to specified regions. It omits any restriction or direction as to the size or location of the area to be affected by a regional order. It leaves the Secretary free to determine when regulation shall become effective, when it shall be terminated throughout the United States or in any portion thereof.
The supposed standards by which the Secretary is to be governed turn out, upon examination, to be no standards whatever. All of the choices mentioned are, according to the Act, to be made if the Secretary has reason *605to believe, or finds, that his proposed action will “tend to effectuate the declared policy” of the Act.*
• 'We turn, therefore, to § 2, which declares the policy of the Congress to be: “through the exercise of the powers conferred upon the Secretary of Agriculture under this title, to establish and maintain such orderly marketing conditions for agricultural commodities in interstate commerce ,as will establish prices to farmers at a level that will give agricultural commodities a purchasing power with respect to articles that farmers buy, equivalent to the purchasing power of agricultural commodities in the base period,” which base period is defined as a period of years antedating the passage of the Act. The section further declares the .policy to be worked out'through the Secretary to be “To protect the interest of the consumer by (a) approaching the level of prices which it is declared to be the policy of Congress to establish in subsection (1) of this section by gradual correction of the current level at as rapid a rate as the Secretary of Agriculture deems to be in the public interest and feasible in view of the current consumptive demand in domestic and foreign markets, and (b) authorizing no action under this title which has for its purpose the maintenance of prices to farmers above the level which it is declared to be the policy of Congress to establish in subsection (1) of this section.”
Assuming that any of these proposed ends or aims were in themselves capable of reasonable definition, it is, nevertheless, evident that the Secretary is to form a judgment by balancing a price raising policy against a consumer-protection policy, according to his views of feasibility and public interest.
If then the separate objects to be attained were matters susceptible of a definite finding there would still be *606the inescapable result that, after such definite finding as to each proposed aim, there must be an ‘exercise of judgment as to the extent to which that aim should be accomplished in the light of other and conflicting aims. And there would still remain the fact that the conclusion might be against any regulation by reason of the Secretary’s unrestrained judgment that, in the circumstances, regulation is not “feasible.”
Enough has been said to show that a law is to come into being on the basis of the Secretary’s sole judgment as to its probable effect upon the milk industry, its probable effect upon the consumer, its probable consonance with the public interest, and its feasibility. The resolution of all such problems is of the essence of law making.
But if, as the Act discloses, the supposed standards whereby the Secretary is to ascertain the elements which are to determine his ultimate decision are themselves so vague that neither he nor anyone can accurately apply them, the unlimited nature of the delegation becomes even clearer.
The first thing the Secretary is permitted to accomplish by regulation, so the statute declares, is the parity in purchasing power of the price to be received by producers with that received in the base period. This parity is to be in terms of things farmers purchase. A moment’s reflection will show that any calculation of such parity is impossible. The things farmers purchase, the relative quantities in which they purchase them, and their price in terms of milk, vary from month to month and from year to year. Moreover, the Secretary is not to establish a parity between two past periods but is to regulate the industry in such fashion as will, in his opinion, produce for the future a parity of the purchasing power of milk with its purchasing power in the base period. The Secretary’s conclusion must lie in the realm of hope or opinion and not in that of ascertained fact. The major objective of *607the Act is in truth to raise prices paid farmers for milk. The upward limit is really left to the Secretary’s uncontrolled discretion.
Turn now to another alleged standard which is to control the Secretary’s action. He is not to raise prices so fast as to injure the interest of the consumer but is to raise them gradually by correction of the current level at as rapid a rate as he deems to be in the public interest and feasible in view of consumptive demand. It is fair to ask whether this constitutes a standard at all. What is the public interest? Must not Congress ascertain and declare it? What is feasible in the way of regulation? Is not this a matter for legislative judgment. How is any one to tell whether the Secretary has disobeyed the mandate of Congress in these respects?
There is in the Act a further delegation of power. Congress might, although committing to the Secretary’s will and judgment the matters above enumerated, have directed him how to regulate the industry if he determined so to do. It might have considered the possible modes of regulation and provided which of them the Secretary should adopt. The Act does no such thing. It leaves to the Secretary the choice of different and mutually exclusive methods of control.
Section 8c (5) applies to’ orders affecting milk and its products. Section 8c (7) refers to orders affecting any of the commodities named in the Act. The first requires that any order affecting milk must contain one, and may contain others, of seven specified conditions. The second requires that in any order there must be included one, and there may be included others, or four conditions. These sections give the Secretary the choice of three independent programs for raising the price of milk, namely,, bargaining with handlers, stabilizing the retail price, or fixing prices to be paid producers. Within each, variation of the widest sort is allowed. Moreover, the Act permits alternative schemes for distributing amongst the *608producers the dollar value of milk sold in the area to which the Secretary’s order applies. The differences between the permissible schemes are not matters of mere detail but are basic and fundamental.
In respect of the choice of method, the only guide is the declaration of policy embodied in § 2. If the Secretary is of opinion that one method is more likely to raise prices than another he is at liberty to put into the form of an order what is tantamount to a statute prescribing the method of his choice. Thus the Secretary is to decide not only whether there is to be a law but, as well, the nature of the law to be enacted.
What was said concerning unconstitutional delegation of legislative power in Panama Refining Co. v. Ryan, 293 U. S. 388, and Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U. S. 495, applies with equal force here. Comparison of the provisions of the Act respecting flue-cured tobacco, which are summarized in Mulford v. Smith, ante, p. 38, with those applicable to milk, will disclose the fundamental difference between the administrative character of the powers delegated in the case of tobacco and the legislative character of those delegated in the case of milk. No authority cited by the Government presents a situation comparable to that here disclosed. It would not be profitable to analyze each of the cases because in each the question of the nature of the statutory standard and its application in the administration of the statute involved depended upon the field which the legislation covered. Where delegation has been sustained the court has been careful to point out the circumstances which made it possible to prescribe a standard by which administrative action was confined and directed. Such a standard, as respects milk marketing, is lacking in the Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937.
I think that the decree should be reversed.
Mr. Justice McReynolds and Mr. Justice Butler join in this opinion.

 See § 8c (3), 8c (4), 8c (16).