Court Opinion

ID: 9426068
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:16:43.373275+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:58.907124
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Marshall,
dissenting.
In reversing the award of attorneys’ fees to the respondent environmentalist groups, the Court today disavows the well-established power of federal equity courts to award attorneys’ fees when the interests of justice so require. While under the traditional American Rule the courts ordinarily refrain from allowing attorneys’ fees, we have recognized several judicial exceptions to that rule for classes of cases in which equity seemed to favor fee shifting. See Sprague v. Ticonic National Bank, 307 U. S. 161 (1939); Mills v. Electric Auto-Lite Co., 396 U. S. 375, 391-392 (1970); Hall v. Cole, 412 U. S. 1, 5, 9 (1973). By imposing an absolute bar on the use of the “private attorney general” rationale as a basis for awarding attorneys’ fees, the Court today takes an extremely narrow view of the independent power of the courts in this area — a view that flies squarely in the face of our prior cases.
The Court relies primarily on the docketing-fees-and-*273court-costs statute, 28 U. S. C. § 1923, in concluding that the American Rule is grounded in statute and that the courts may not award counsel fees unless they determine that Congress so intended. The various exceptions to the rule against fee shifting that this Court has created in the past are explained as constructions of the fee statute. Ante, at 257. In addition, the Court notes that Congress has provided for attorneys’ fees in a number of statutes, but made no such provision in others. It concludes from this selective treatment that where award of attorneys’ fees is not expressly authorized, the courts should deny them as a matter of course. Finally, the Court suggests that the policy questions bearing on whether to grant attorneys’ fees in a particular case are not ones that the Judiciary is well equipped to handle, and that fee shifting under the private-attorney-general rationale would quickly degenerate into an arbitrary and lawless process. Because the Court concludes that granting attorneys’ fees to private attorneys general is beyond the equitable power of the federal courts, it does not reach the question whether an award would be proper against Alyeska in this case under the private-attorney-general rationale.
On my view of the case, both questions must be answered. I see no basis in precedent or policy for holding that the courts cannot award attorneys’ fees where the interests of justice require recovery, simply because the claim does not fit comfortably within one of the previously sanctioned judicial exceptions to the American Rule. The Court has not in the past regarded the award of attorneys’ fees as a matter reserved for the Legislature, and it has certainly not read the docketing-fees statute as a general bar to judicial fee shifting. The Court’s concern with the difficulty of applying meaningful standards in awarding attorneys’ fees to sue*274cessful “public benefit” litigants is a legitimate one, but in my view it overstates the novelty of the “private attorney general” theory. The guidelines developed in closely analogous statutory and nonstatutory attorneys’ fee cases could readily be applied in cases such as the one at bar. I therefore disagree with the Court’s flat rejection of the private-attorney-general rationale for fee shifting. Moreover, in my view the equities in this case support an award of attorneys’ fees against Alyeska. Accordingly, I must respectfully dissent.
. I
A
Contrary to the suggestion in the Court’s opinion, our cases unequivocally establish that granting or withholding attorneys’ fees is not strictly a matter of statutory construction, but has an independent basis in the equitable powers of the courts. In Sprague v. Ticonic National Bank, supra, the lower courts had denied a request for attorneys’ fees from the proceeds of certain bond sales, which, because of petitioners’ success in the litigation, would accrue to the benefit of a number of other similarly situated persons. This Court reversed, holding that the allowance of attorneys’ fees and costs beyond those included in the ordinary taxable costs recognized by statute was within the traditional equity jurisdiction of the federal courts. The Court regarded the equitable foundation of the power to allow fees to be beyond serious question:
“Allowance of such costs in appropriate situations is part of the historic equity jurisdiction of the federal courts.” 307 U. S., at 164. “Plainly the foundation for the historic practice of granting reimbursement for the costs of litigation other than the conventional [statutory] taxable costs is part of *275the original authority of the chancellor to do equity in a particular situation.” Id., at 166.1
In more recent cases, we have reiterated the same theme: while as a general rule attorneys’ fees are not to be awarded to the successful litigant, the courts as well as the Legislature may create exceptions to that rule. See Mills v. Electric Auto-Lite Co., 396 U. S., at 391-392; Hall v. Cole, 412 U. S., at 5. Under the judge-made exceptions, attorneys’ fees have been assessed, without statutory authorization, for willful violation of a court order, Toledo Scale Co. v. Computing Scale Co., 261 U. S. 399, 426-428 (1923); for bad faith or oppressive litigation practices, Vaughan v. Atkinson, 369 U. S. 527, 530-531 (1962); and where the successful litigants have created a common fund for recovery or extended a substantial benefit to a class, Central Railroad & Banking Co. v. Pettus, 113 U. S. 116 (1885); Mills v. Electric Auto-Lite Co., supra.2 While the Court today acknowledges the continued vitality of these exceptions, it turns its back on the theory underlying them, and on the generous construction given to the common-benefit exception in our recent cases.
In Mills, we found the absence of statutory authorization no barrier to extending the common-benefit theory to include nonmonetary benefits as a basis for awarding *276fees in a stockholders’ derivative suit. Discovering nothing in the applicable provisions of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 to indicate that Congress intended “to circumscribe the courts’ power to grant appropriate remedies,” 396 U. S., at 391, we concluded that the District Court was free to determine whether special circumstances would justify an award of attorneys’ fees and litigation costs in excess of the statutory allotment. Because the petitioners’ lawsuit presumably accrued to the benefit of the corporation and the other shareholders, and because permitting the others to benefit from the petitioners’ efforts without contributing to the costs of the litigation would result in a form of unjust enrichment, the Court held that the petitioners should be given an attorneys’ fee award assessed against the respondent corporation.
We acknowledged in Mills that the common-fund exception to the American Rule had undergone considerable expansion since its earliest applications in cases in which the court simply ordered contribution to the litigation costs from a common fund produced for the benefit of a number of nonparty beneficiaries. The doctrine could apply, the Court wrote, where there was no fund at all, id., at 392, but simply a benefit of some sort conferred on the class from which contribution is sought. Id., at 393-394. As long as the court has jurisdiction over an entity through which the contribution can be effected, it is the fairer course to relieve the plaintiff of exclusive responsibility for the burden. Finally, we noted that even where it is impossible to assign monetary value to the benefit conferred, “the stress placed by Congress on the importance of fair and informed corporate suffrage leads to the conclusion that, in vindicating the statutory policy, petitioners have rendered a substantial service to the corporation and its *277shareholders.” Id., at 396. The benefit that we discerned in Mills went beyond simple monetary relief: it included the benefit to the shareholders of having available to them “an important means of enforcement of the proxy statute.” Ibid.
Only two years ago, in a member’s suit against his union under the “free speech” provisions of the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act, we held that it was within the equitable power of the federal courts to grant attorneys’ fees against the union, since the plaintiff had conferred a substantial benefit on all the members of the union by vindicating their free speech interests. Hall v. Cole, 412 U S. 1 (1973). Because a court-ordered award of attorneys’ fees in a suit under the free speech provision of the LMRDA promoted Congress’ intention to afford meaningful protection for the rights of employees and the public generally, and because without provision of attorneys’ fees an aggrieved union member would be unlikely to be able to finance the necessary litigation, id., at 13, the Court held that the allowance of counsel fees was “consistent with both the [LMRDA] and the historic equitable power of federal courts to grant such relief in the interests of justice.” Id., at 14.
In my view, these cases simply cannot be squared with the majority’s suggestion that the availability of attorneys’ fees is entirely a matter of statutory authority. The cases plainly establish an independent basis for equity courts to grant attorneys’ fees under several rather generous rubrics. The Court acknowledges as much when it says that we have independent authority to award fees in cases of bad faith or as a means of taxing costs to special beneficiaries. But I am at a loss to understand how it can also say that this independent judicial power succumbs to Procrustean statutory restrictions — indeed, to statutory silence — as soon as the far *278from bright line between common benefit and public benefit is crossed. I can only conclude that the Court is willing to tolerate the “equitable” exceptions to its analysis, not because they can be squared with it, but because they are by now too well established to be casually dispensed with.
B
The tension between today’s opinion and the less rigid treatment of attorneys’ fees in the past is reflected particularly in the Court’s analysis of the docketing-fees statute, 28 U. S. C. § 1923, as a general statutory embodiment of the American Rule. While the Court has held in the past that Congress can restrict the availability of attorneys’ fees under a particular statute either expressly or by implication,3 see Fleischmann Distilling Corp. v. Maier Brewing Co., 386 U. S. 714 (1967), it has refused to construe § 1923 as a plenary restraint on attorneys’ fee awards.
Starting with the early common-fund cases, the Court has consistently read the fee-bill statute of 1853 narrowly when that Act has been interposed as a restriction on the Court’s equitable powers to award attorneys’ fees. In Trustees v. Oreenough, 105 U. S. 527 (1881), the Court held that the statute imposed no bar to an award of attorneys’ fees from the fund collected as a result of the plaintiff’s efforts, since:
“[The fee bill statute addressed] only those fees *279and costs which are strictly chargeable as between party and party, and [did not] regulate the fees of counsel and other expenses and charges as between solicitor and client.... And the act contains nothing which can be fairly construed to deprive the Court of Chancery of its long-established control over the costs and charges of the litigation, to be exercised as equity and justice may require Id., at 535-536.
In Sprague, supra, the Court again applied this distinction in recognizing “the power of federal courts in equity suits to allow counsel fees and other expenses entailed by the litigation not included in the ordinary taxable costs recognized by statute.” 307 U. S., at 164. The Court there identified the costs “between party and party” as the sole target of the 1853 Act and its successors. The award of attorneys’ fees beyond the limited ordinary taxable costs, the Court termed costs “as between solicitor and client”; it held that these expenses, which could be assessed to the extent that fairness to the other party would permit, were not subject to the restrictions of the fee statute. Id., at 166, and n. 2. Whether this award was collected out of a fund in the court or through an assessment against the losing party in the litigation was not deemed controlling. Id., at 166-167; Mills, 396 U. S., at 392-394.
More recently, the Court gave its formal sanction to the line of lower court cases holding that the fee statute imposed no restriction on the equity court’s power to include attorneys’ fees in the plaintiff’s award when the defendant has unjustifiably put the plaintiff to the expense of. litigation in order to obtain a benefit to which the latter was plainly entitled. Vaughan v. Atkinson, 369 U. S. 527 (1962). Distinguishing The Baltimore, 8 Wall. 377 (1869), a case upon which the Court *280today heavily relies, the Court in Vaughan noted that the question was not one of “costs” in the statutory sense, since the attorneys’ fee award was legitimately included as a part of the primary relief to which the plaintiff was entitled, rather than an ancillary adjustment of litigation expenses.4
Finally, in Fleischmann Distilling Corp. v. Maier Brewing Co., 386 U. S. 714 (1967), the Court undertook a comprehensive review of the assessment of attorneys’ fees in federal-court actions. While noting that nonstatutory exceptions to the American Rule had been sanctioned “when overriding considerations of justice seemed to compel such a result,” id., at 718, the Court held that the meticulous provision of remedies available under the Lanham Act and the history of unsuccessful attempts to include an attorneys’ fee provision in the Act precluded the Court’s implying a right to attorneys’ fees in trademark actions. The Court did not, however, purport to find a statutory basis for the American Rule, and in fact it treated § 1923 as a “general exception” to the American Rule, not its statutory embodiment. 386 U. S., at 718 n. 11.
My Brother White concedes that the language of the 1853 statute indicating that the awards provided therein were exclusive of any other compensation is no longer a part of the fee statute. But we are told that the fee statute should be read as if that language were still in the Act, *281since there is no indication in the legislative history of the 1948 revision of the Judicial Code that the revisers intended to alter the meaning of § 1923. Yet even if that language were still in the Act, I should think that the construction of the Act in the cases creating judicial exceptions to the American Rule would suffice to dispose of the Court’s argument. Since that language is no longer a part of the fee statute, it seems even less reasonable to read the fee statute as an uncompromising bar to equitable fee awards.
Nor can any support fairly be drawn from Congress’ failure to provide expressly for attorneys’ fees in either the National Environmental Policy Act or the Mineral Leasing Act, while it has provided for fee awards under other statutes. Confronted with the more forceful argument that other sections of the same statute included express provisions for recovery of attorneys' fees, we twice held that specific-remedy provisions in some sections should not be interpreted as evidencing congressional intent to deny the courts the power to award counsel fees in actions brought under other sections of that Act that do not mention attorneys’ fees. Hall v. Cole, 412 U. S., at 11; Mills v. Electric Auto-Lite Co., 396 U. S., at 390-391. Indeed, the Mills Court interpreted congressional silence, not as a prohibition, but as authorization for the Court to decide the attorneys’fees issue in the exercise of its coordinate, equitable power. Id., at 391. In rejecting the argument from congressional silence in Mills and Hall, the Court relied on the established rule that implied restrictions on the power to do equity are disfavored. Hecht Co. v. Bowles, 321 U. S. 321, 329 (1944).5 The same principle
*282applies, a fortiori, to this case, where the implication must be drawn from the presence of attorneys’ fees provisions in other, unrelated pieces of legislation.6
In sum, the Court’s primary contention — that Congress enjoys hegemony over fee shifting because of the docketing-fee statute and the occasional express provisions for attorneys’ fees — will not withstand even the most casual reading of the precedents. The Court’s recognition of the several judge-made exceptions to the American rule demonstrates the inadequacy of its analysis. Whatever the Court’s view of the wisdom of fee shifting in “public benefit” cases in general, I think that it is a serious misstep for it to abdicate equitable authority in this area in the name of statutory construction.
II
The statutory analysis aside, the Court points to the difficulties in formulating a “private attorney general” exception that will not swallow the American Rule. I do not find the problem as vexing as the majority does. In fact, the guidelines to the proper application of the *283private-attorney-general rationale have been suggested in several of our recent cases, both under statutory attorneys’ fee provisions and under the common-benefit exception.
In Newman v. Piggie Park Enterprises, Inc., 390 U. S. 400 (1968), we held that successful plaintiffs who sue under the discretionary-fee-award provision of Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 are entitled to the recovery of fees “unless special circumstances would render such an award unjust.” 390 U. S., at 402. The Court reasoned that if Congress had intended to authorize fees only on the basis of bad faith, no new legislation would have been required in view of the long history of the bad-faith exception. Id., at 402 n. 4. The Court’s decision in Newman stands on the necessity of fee shifting to permit meaningful private enforcement of protected rights with a significant public impact. The Court noted that Title II did not provide for a monetary award, but only equitable relief. Absent a fee-shifting provision, litigants would be required to suffer financial loss in order to vindicate a policy “that Congress considered of the highest priority.” 390 U. S., at 402. Accordingly, the Court read the attorneys’-fee provision in Title II generously, since if “successful plaintiffs were routinely forced to bear their own attorneys’ fees, few aggrieved parties would be in a position to advance the public interest by invoking the injunctive powers of the federal courts.” 390 U. S., at 402.
Analyzing the attorneys’-fee provision in § 718 of the Education Amendments Act of 1972, the Court in Bradley v. School Board of the City of Richmond, 416 U. S. 696, 718 (1974), made a similar point. There the school board, a publicly funded governmental entity, had been engaged in litigation with parents of schoolchildren in the district. The Court observed that the *284two parties had vastly disparate resources for litigation, and that the plaintiffs had “rendered substantial service both to the Board itself, by bringing it into compliance with its constitutional mandate, and to the community at large by securing for it the benefits assumed to flow from a nondiscriminatory educational system.” Id., at 718. Although the analysis in Newman was directed at construing the statutory-fees provision and the analysis in Bradley went to the question of whether the fees provision should be applied to services rendered before its enactment, the arguments in those cases for reading the attorneys’ fee provisions broadly is quite applicable to nonstatutory cases as well.
Indeed, we have already recognized several of the same factors in the recent common-benefit cases. In Mills, we emphasized the benefit to the class of shareholders of having a meaningful remedy for corporate misconduct through private enforcement of the proxy regulations. Since the beneficiaries could fairly be taxed for this benefit, we held that the fee award should be made available. Similarly, in Hall, we pointed to the imbalance between the litigating power of the union and one of its members; in order to ensure that the right in question could be enforced, we held that attorneys’ fees should be provided in appropriate cases. Additionally, we noted that the enforcement of the rights in question would accrue to the special benefit of the other union members, which justified assessing the attorneys’ fees against the treasury of the defendant union.
From these cases and others, it is possible to discern with some confidence the factors that should guide an equity court in determining whether an award of attorneys’ fees is appropriate.7 The reasonable cost of the *285plaintiff’s representation should be placed upon the defendant if (1) the important right being protected is one actually or necessarily shared by the general public or some class thereof; (2) the plaintiff’s pecuniary interest in the outcome, if any, would not normally justify incurring the cost of counsel; and (3) shifting that cost to the defendant would effectively place it on a class that benefits from the litigation.
There is hardly room for doubt that the first of these criteria is met in the present case. Significant public benefits are derived from citizen litigation to vindicate expressions of congressional or constitutional policy. See Newman v. Piggie Park Enterprises, supra. As a result of this litigation, respondents forced Congress to revise the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920 rather than permit its continued evasion. See Pub. L. 93-153, 87 Stat. 576. The 1973 amendments impose more stringent safety and liability standards, and they require Alyeska to pay fair market value for the right-of-way and to bear the costs of applying for the permit and monitoring the right-of-way.
Although the NEPA issues were not actually decided, the lawsuit served as a catalyst to ensure a thorough analysis of the pipeline’s environmental impact. Requir*286ing the Interior Department to comply with the NEPA and draft an impact statement satisfied the public’s statutory right to have information about the environmental consequences of the project, 83 Stat. 853, 42 U. S. C. § 4332(C), and also forced delay in the construction until safeguards could be included as conditions to the new right-of-way grants.8
Petitioner contends that these “beneficial results . . . might have occurred” without this litigation. Brief for Petitioner 11, 36-42. But the record demonstrates that Alyeska was unwilling to observe and the Government unwilling to enforce congressional land-use policy. Private action was necessary to assure compliance with the Mineral Leasing Act; the new environmental, technological, and land-use safeguards written into the 1973 amendments to the Act are directly traceable to the respondents’ success in this litigation. In like manner, continued action was needed to prod the Interior Department into filing an impact statement; prior to the litigation, the Department and Alyeska were prepared to proceed with the construction of the pipeline on a piecemeal basis without considering the overall risks to the environment and to the physical integrity of the pipeline.
The second criterion is equally well satisfied in this case. Respondents’ willingness to undertake this litigation was largely altruistic. While they did, of course, stand to benefit from the additional protections they sought for the area potentially affected by the pipeline, see Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U. S. 727 (1972), the direct benefit to these citizen organizations is truly dwarfed by the demands of litigation of this proportion. Extensive factual discovery, expert scientific analysis, and legal *287research on a broad range of environmental, technological, and land-use issues were required. See Affidavit of Counsel (Re Bill of Costs), App. 213-219. The disparity between respondents’ direct stake in the outcome and the resources required to pursue the case is exceeded only by the disparity between their resources and those of their opponents — the Federal Government and a consortium of giant oil companies.
Respondents’ claim also fulfills the third criterion, for Alyeska is the proper party to bear and spread the cost of this litigation undertaken .in the interest of the general public. The Department of the Interior, of course, bears legal responsibility for adopting a position later determined to be unlawful. And, since the class of beneficiaries from the outcome of this litigation is probably coextensive with the class of United States citizens, the Government should in fairness bear the costs of respondents’ representation. But, the Court of Appeals concluded that it could not impose attorneys’ fees on the United States, because in its view the statute providing for assessment of costs against the Government, 28 U. S. C. § 2412, permits the award of ordinary court costs, “but [does] not includ[e] the fees and expenses of attorneys.” Since the respondents did not cross-petition on that point, we have no occasion to rule on the correctness of the court’s construction of that statute.9
*288Before the Department and the courts, Alyeska advocated adoption of the position taken by Interior, playing a major role in all aspects of the case.10 This litigation conferred direct and concrete economic benefits on Alyeska and its principals in affording protection of the physical integrity of the pipeline. If a court could be ■ reasonably confident that the ultimate incidence of costs imposed upon an applicant for a public permit would indeed be on the general public, it would be equitable to shift those costs to the applicant.11 In this connection, Alyeska, as a consortium of oil companies that do business in 49 States and account for some 20% of the national oil market, would indeed be able to redistribute the additional cost to the general public. In my view the ability to pass the cost forward to the consuming public warrants an award here. The decision to bypass Congress and avoid analysis of the environmental consequences of the pipeline was made in the first instance by Alyeska’s principals and not the Secretary of the Interior. The award does not punish the consortium for these actions but recognizes that it is an effective substitute for the public beneficiaries who successfully challenged these actions. Since the Court of Appeals held Alyeska accountable for a fair share of the fees to ease the burden on the public-minded citizen litigators, I would affirm the judgment below.

 See also Kansas City Southern R. Co. v. Guardian Trust Co., 281 U. S. 1, 9 (1930); Universal Oil Products Co. v. Root Refining Co., 328 U. S. 575, 580 (1946).

 On several recent occasions we have recognized that these exceptions ai*e well established in our equity jurisprudence. See F. D. Rich Co., Inc. v. United States ex rel. Industrial Lumber Co., 417 U. S. 116, 129-130 (1974); Hall v. Cole, 412 U. S. 1, 5 (1973); Fleischmann Distilling Corp. v. Maier Brewing Co., 386 U. S. 714, 718-719 (1967). See also Newman v. Piggie Park Enterprises, Inc., 390 U. S. 400, 402 n. 4 (1968); 6 J. Moore, Federal Practice ¶ 54.77 [2], p. 1709 (2d ed. 1974).

 In F. D. Rich Co., Inc. v. United States ex rel. Industrial Lumber Co., 417 U. S. 116 (1974), we held that attorneys’ fees should not be granted as a matter of course under the provision of the Miller Act that granted claimants the right to “sums justly due.” 49 Stat. 794, as amended, 40 U. S. C. § 270b (a). To overturn the American Rule as a matter of statutory construction would be improper, we held, with no better evidence of congressional intent to provide for attorneys’ fees, and in the context of everyday commercial litigation, such as that under the Miller Act. 417 U. S., at 130.

 Although Vaughan was an admiralty case and therefore subject to the possibly narrow reading as a case evincing a special concern for plaintiff seamen as wards of the admiralty court, we have not given the case such a narrow construction. See Hall v. Cole, 412 U. S., at 5; F. D. Rich Co., Inc. v. United States ex rel. Industrial Lumber Co., 417 U. S., at 129 n. 17. Indeed, the Vaughan Court itself relied on Rolax v. Atlantic Coast Line R. Co., 186 F. 2d 473 (CA4 1951), a nonadmiralty case in which the plaintiff was awarded attorneys’ fees as an equitable matter because of the obduracy of the defendant in opposing the plaintiff's civil rights claim.

 The words of the Hecht Court apply well to the case at hand: “The essence of equity jurisdiction has been the power of the Chancellor to do equity and to mould each decree to the necessities *282of the particular case. Flexibility rather than rigidity has distinguished it. The qualities of mercy and practicality have made equity the instrument for nice adjustment and reconciliation between the public interest and private needs as well as between competing private claims. We do not believe that such a major departure from that long tradition as is here proposed should be lightly implied.” 321 U. S., at 329-330.

 The Court makes the further point that 28 U. S. C. §2412 generally precludes a grant of attorneys’ fees against the Federal Government and its officers. Even if this is true, I fail to see how it supports the view that the private-attomey-general rationale should be jettisoned altogether. There are many situations in which other entities, both private and public, are sued in public interest cases. If attorneys’ fees can properly be imposed on those parties, I see no reason why the statutory immunity of the Federal Government should have any bearing on the matter.

 These teachings have not been lost on the lower courts in which the elements of the private-attorney-general rationale have been *285more fully explored. See e. g., Souza v. Travisono, 512 F. 2d 1137 (CA1 1975); Hoitt v. Vitek, 495 F. 2d 219 (CA1 1974); Knight v. Auciello, 453 F. 2d 852 (CA1 1972); Cornist v. Richland Parish School Board, 495 F. 2d 189 (CA5 1974); Fairley v. Patterson, 493 F. 2d 598 (CA5 1974); Cooper v. Allen, 467 F. 2d 836 (CA5 1972); Lee v. Southern Home Sites Corp., 444 F. 2d 143 (CA5 1971); Taylor v. Perini, 503 F. 2d 899 (CA6 1974); Morales v. Haines, 486 F. 2d 880 (CA7 1973); Donahue v. Staunton, 471 F. 2d 475 (CA7 1972), cert. denied, 410 U. S. 955 (1973); Fowler v. Schwarzwalder, 498 F. 2d 143 (CA8 1974); Brandenburger v. Thompson, 494 F. 2d 885 (CA9 1974); La Raza Unida v. Volpe, 57 F. R. D. 94 (ND Cal. 1972); Wyatt v. Stickney, 344 F. Supp. 387 (MD Ala. 1972); NAACP v. Allen, 340 F. Supp. 703 (MD Ala. 1972).

 See S. Rep. No. 93-207, p. 18 (1973); H. R. Rep. No. 93-414, p. 14 (1973); Hearings on S. 970, S. 993, and S. 1565 before the Senate Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, 93d Cong., 1st Sess., pt. 4, pp. 56, 127 (1973).

 The statute, construed in light of the rule against implied restrictions on equity jurisdiction, may not foreclose attorneys’ fee awards against the United States in all cases. Section 2412 states that the ordinary recoverable costs shall not include attorneys’ fees; it may be read not to bar fee awards, over and above ordinary taxable costs, when equity demands. In any event, there are plainly circumstances under which § 2412 would not bar attorneys’ fee awards against the United States, see, e. g., Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. v. Environmental Protection Agency, 484 F. 2d 1331 (CA1 1973).

 In requiring Alyeska to pay only half of the fee, the Court of Appeals correctly recognized that, absent the statutory bar, the Government would have been in an equal position to shift the costs to the public beneficiaries.

 See Dawson, Lawyers and Involuntary Clients in Public Interest Litigation, 88 Harv. L. Rev. 849, 902-905 (1975).