Court Opinion

ID: 9474522
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:00:24.09725+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:44:09.270851
License: Public Domain

STARR, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I concur fully in Judge Scalia’s opinion for the court. I write separately to emphasize what I view as the narrowness of today’s holding. We have before us an executive decision based expressly on economic considerations which, as Judge Scalia’s analysis convincingly shows, is amendable to judicial review and which will not withstand the rather modest scrutiny mandated by the APA. We have not been asked to review an executive decision explicitly grounded on military and foreign policy concerns, a decision which would present us with a different case. The legislative history of the statute suggests to me that Congress did not intend, by including the narrow, cost-related proviso, to preclude the President from employing non-U.S. vessels for supplying military cargo (regardless of the rates charged by U.S. vessels) if he determines that military and foreign policy considerations so require. Indeed, to construe the statute otherwise would raise the question of whether the statute invades core Presidential powers under Article II of the Constitution.
But that problem is not before us. We have a specific decision grounded expressly on economic considerations, nothing more. A passing reference to “consultations with the Secretary of State” cannot reasonably be taken to mean that the decisionmaker was relying on foreign policy and military considerations. That the decision was *1082based on an economic analysis is further suggested by the Government’s litigating position, namely that the statute requires economic-based consideration and justification — even when our bases in Iceland are said to be threatened. It strikes me as passing strange that Congress would demand, at the peril of losing vital military bases overseas, that the Commander-in-Chief employ U.S. shipping companies to transport military supplies so long as those companies are not exacting excessive and unreasonable rates. That defies common sense. I doubt whether the Congress in 1904 was so protectionist in sentiment that it intended to bind the President in such a Procrustean manner.