Court Opinion

ID: 9427777
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:21:51.894953+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:09.660784
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Brennan,
with whom Mr. Justice Marshall and Mr. Justice Stevens join, dissenting.
The Internal Revenue Service, unlike common-law courts, has only such authority as Congress gives it. Cf. United States v. LaSalle National Bank, 437 U. S. 298, 307 (1978) (validity of Service summonses depends on “whether they were among those authorized by Congress”). Congress has granted the Service authority to summon individuals “to appear before the Secretary ... at a time and place named in the summons and to produce such books, papers, records, or other data, and to give such testimony, under oath, as may be relevant or material to such inquiry. . . .” 26 U. S. C. § 7602. The Court holds today that this authority to compel “testimony” includes authority to compel the creation of handwriting exemplars.1
*720The Court, however, is unable to point to anything in the statutory language or legislative history that even suggests that the obligation to “give testimony” includes an obligation to create a handwriting exemplar. Indeed, the Court concedes, as it must, that a handwriting exemplar is a kind of nontestimonial physical evidence.2- Certainly, Congress has the power to authorize the Service to compel the creation of exemplars, but it has not chosen to do so in § 7602.3 Accordingly, I dissent.

 The Court also places some reliance on the word “appear,” which the Court suggests “necessarily entails an obligation to display physical fea*720tures to the summoning authority.” Ante, at 714. Plainly “appear” adds nothing to the authority of the Service. The word is used only to indicate that the person summoned must deliver the requested testimony or documents at the designated time and place.

 The Court’s use of the label “nontestimonial” is meaningful, for “[t]es-timony properly means only such evidence as is delivered by a witness . .., either orally or in the form of affidavits or depositions.” Black’s Law Dictionary 1324 (5th ed. 1979). Testimony is a statement of knowledge or belief by a witness as opposed to the mere display of a physical characteristic.

 Even if I thought the statute were ambiguous, I would reach the same result because I strongly believe that “until Congress has stated otherwise, our duty to protect the rights of the individual should hold sway over the interest in more effective law enforcement.” Dalia v. United States, 441 U. S. 238, 263 (1979) (Stevens, J., dissenting).