Panama Refining Co. v. Ryan/Dissent Cardozo

Mr. Justice CARDOZO (dissenting).

With all that is said in the opinion of the court as to the Code of Fair Competition adopted by the President August 16, 1933, for the Governance of the Petroleum Industry, I am fully in accord. No question is before us at this time as to the power of Congress to regulate production. No question is here as to its competence to clothe the President with a delegated power whereby a code of fair competition may become invested with the force of law. The petitioners were never in jeopardy by force of such a code or of regulations made thereunder. They were not in jeopardy because there was neither statute nor regulation subjecting them to pains or penalties if they set the code at naught. One must deplore the administrative methods that brought about uncertainty for a time as to the terms of executive orders intended to be law. Even so, the petitioners do not stand in need of an injunction to restrain the enforcement of a non-existent mandate.

I am unable to assent to the conclusion that section 9(c) of the National Recovery Act, 15 USCA § 709(c), a section delegating to the President a very different power from any that is involved in the regulation of production or in the promulgation of a code, is to be nullified upon the ground that his discretion is too broad or for any other reason. My point of difference with the majority of the court is narrow. I concede that to uphold the delegation there is need to discover in the terms of the act a standard reasonably clear whereby discretion must be governed. I deny that such a standard is lacking in respect of the prohibitions permitted by this section when the act with all its reasonable implications is considered as a whole. What the standard is becomes the pivotal inquiry.

As to the nature of the act which the President is authorized to perform there is no need for implication. That at least is definite beyond the possibility of challenge. He may prohibit the transportation in interstate and foreign commerce of petroleum and the products thereof produced or withdrawn from storage in excess of the amount permitted by any state law or valid regulation or order prescribed thereunder. He is not left to roam at will among all the possible subjects of interstate transportation, picking and choosing as he pleases. I am far from asserting now that delegation would be valid if accompanied by all that latitude of choice. In the laying of his interdict he is to confine himself to a particular commodity, and to that commodity when produced or withdrawn from storage in contravention of the policy and statutes of the states. He has choice, though within limits, as to the occasion, but none whatever as to the means. The means have been prescribed by Congress. There has been no grant to the Executive of any roving commission to inquire into evils and then, upon discovering them, do anything he pleases. His act being thus defined, what else must he ascertain in order to regulate his discretion and bring the power into play? The answer is not given if we look to section 9(c) only, but it comes to us by implication from a view of other sections where the standards are defined. The prevailing opinion concedes that a standard will be as effective if imported into section 9(c) by reasonable implication as if put there in so many words. If we look to the whole structure of the statute, the test is plainly this, that the President is to forbid the transportation of the oil when he believes, in the light of the conditions of the industry as disclosed from time to time, that the prohibition will tend to effectuate the declared policies of the act-not merely his own conception of its policies, undirected by any extrinsic guide, but the policies announced by section 1 (15 USCA § 701) in the forefront of the statute as an index to the meaning of everything that follows.

Oil produced or transported in excess of a statutory quota is known in the industry as 'hot oil,' and the record is replete with evidence as to the effect of such production and transportation upon the economic situation and upon national recovery. A declared policy of Congress in the adoption of the act is 'to eliminate unfair competitive practices.' Beyond question an unfair competitive practice exists when 'hot oil' is transported in interstate commerce with the result that lawabiding dealers must compete with lawbreakers. Here is one of the standards set up in the act to guide the President's discretion. Another declared policy of Congress is 'to conserve natural resources.' Beyond question the disregard of statutory quotas is wasting the oil fields in Texas and other states and putting in jeopardy of exhaustion one of the treasures of the nation. All this is developed in the record and in the arguments of counsel for the government with a wealth of illustration. Here is a second standard. Another declared policy of Congress is to 'promote the fullest possible utilization of the present productive capacity of industries,' and 'except as may be temporarily required' to 'avoid undue restriction of production.' Beyond question prevailing conditions in the oil industry have brought about the need for temporary restriction in order to promote in the long run the fullest productive capacity of business in all its many branches, for the effect of present practices is to diminish that capacity by demoralizing prices and thus increasing unemployment. The ascertainment of these facts at any time or place was a task too intricate and special to be performed by Congress itself through a general enactment in advance of the event. All that Congress could safely do was to declare the act to be done and the policies to be promoted, leaving to the delegate of its power the ascertainment of the shifting facts that would determine the relation between the doing of the act and the attainment of the stated ends. That is what it did. It said to the President, in substance: You are to consider whether the transportation of oil in excess of the statutory quotas is offensive to one or more of the policies enumerated in section 1, whether the effect of such conduct is to promote unfair competition or to waste the natural resources or to demoralize prices or to increase unemployment or to reduce the purchasing power of the workers of the nation. If these standards or some of them have been flouted with the result of a substantial obstruction to industrial recovery, you may then by a prohibitory order eradicate the mischief.

I am not unmindful of the argument that the President has the privilege of choice between one standard and another, acting or failing to act according to an estimate of values that is individual and personal. To describe his conduct thus is to ignore the essence of his function. What he does is to inquire into the industrial facts as they exist from time to time. Cf. Hampton, Jr., & Co. v. United States, 276 U.S. 394, at page 409, 48 S.Ct. 348, 72 L.Ed. 624; Locke's Appeal, 72 Pa. 491, 498, 13 Am.Rep. 716, quoted with approval in Field v. Clark, 143 U.S. 649, at page 694, 12 S.Ct. 495, 36 L.Ed. 294. These being ascertained, he is not to prefer one standard to another in any subjective attitude of mind, in any personal or willful way. He is to study the facts objectively, the violation of a standard impelling him to action or inaction according to its observed effect upon industrial recovery-the ultimate end, as appears by the very heading of the title, to which all the other ends are tributary and mediate. Nor is there any essential conflict among the standards inter se, at all events when they are viewed in relation to section 9 (c) and the power there conferred. In its immediacy, the exclusion of oil from the channels of transportation is a restriction of interstate commerce, not a removal of obstructions. This is self-evident, and, of course, was understood by Congress when the discretionary power of exclusion was given to its delegate. But what is restriction in its immediacy may in its ultimate and larger consequences be expansion and development. Congress was aware that for the recovery of national well-being there might be need of temporary restriction upon production in one industry or another. It said so in section 1. When it clothed the President with power to impose such a restriction-to prohibit the flow of oil illegally produced-it laid upon him a mandate to inquire and determine whether the conditions in that particular industry were such at any given time as to make restriction helpful to the declared objectives of the act and to the ultimate attainment of industrial recovery. If such a situation does not present an instance of lawful delegation in a typical and classic form (Field v. Clark, 143 U.S. 649, 12 S.Ct. 495, 36 L.Ed. 294; United States v. Grimaud, 220 U.S. 506, 31 S.Ct. 480, 55 L.Ed. 563; Hampton, Jr., & Co. v. United States, 276 U.S. 394, 48 S.Ct. 348, 72 L.Ed. 624), categories long established will have to be formulated anew.

In what has been written, I have stated, but without developing the argument, that by reasonable implication the power conferred upon the President by section 9(c) is to be read as if coupled with the words that he shall exercise the power whenever satisfied that by doing so he will effectuate the policy of the statute as theretofore declared. Two canons of interpretation, each familiar to our law, leave no escape from that conclusion. One is that the meaning of a statute is to be looked for, not in any single section, but in all the parts together and in their relation to the end in view. Cherokee Intermarriage Cases (Red Bird v. U.S.), 203 U.S. 76, 89, 27 S.Ct. 29, 51 L.Ed. 96; McKee v. United States, 164 U.S. 287, 17 S.Ct. 92, 41 L.Ed. 437; Talbott v. Board of Com'rs of Silver Bow County, 139 U.S. 438, 443, 444, 11 S.Ct. 594, 35 L.Ed. 210. The other is that, when a statute is reasonably susceptible of two interpretations, by one of which it is unconstitutional and by the other valid, the court prefers the meaning that preserves to the meaning that destroys. United States v. Delaware & Hudson Co., 213 U.S. 366, 407, 29 S.Ct. 527, 53 L.Ed. 836; Knights Templars' & Masons' Life Indemnity Co. v. Jarman, 187 U.S. 197, 205, 23 S.Ct. 108, 47 L.Ed. 139. Plainly, section 1, with its declaration of the will of Congress, is the chart that has been furnished to the President to enable him to shape his course among the reefs and shallows of this act. If there could be doubt as to this when section 1 (15 USCA § 701) is viewed alone, the doubt would be dispelled by the reiteration of the policy in the sections that come later. In section 2 (15 USCA § 702). which relates to administrative agencies, in section 3 (15 USCA § 703), which relates to codes of fair competition, in section 4 (15 USCA § 704), which relates to agreements and licenses, in section 6 (15 USCA § 706), which prescribes limitations upon the application of the statute, and in section 10 (15 USCA § 710), which permits the adoption of rules and regulations, authority is conferred upon the President to do one or more acts as the delegate of Congress when he is satisfied that thereby he will aid 'in effectuating the policy of this title' or in carrying out its provisions. True section 9 (15 USCA § 709), the one relating to petroleum, does not by express words of reference embody the same standard, yet nothing different can have been meant. What, indeed, is the alternative? Either the statute means that the President is to adhere to the declared policy of Congress, or it means that he is to exercise a merely arbitrary will. The one construction invigorates the act; the other saps its life. A choice between them is not hard.

I am persuaded that a reference, express or implied, to the policy of Congress as declared in section 1, is a sufficient definition of a standard to make the statute valid. Discretion is not unconfined and vagrant. It is canalized within banks that keep it from overflowing. Field v. Clark, 143 U.S. 649, 12 S.Ct. 495, 36 L.Ed. 294, United States v. Grimaud, 220 U.S. 506, 31 S.Ct. 480, 55 L.Ed. 563, and Hampton, Jr., & Co. v. United States, 276 U.S. 394, 48 S.Ct. 348, 72 L.Ed. 624, state the applicable principle. Under these decisions the separation of powers between the Executive and Congress is not a doctrinaire concept to be made use of with pedantic rigor. There must be sensible approximation, there must be elasticity of adjustment, in response to the practical necessities of government, which cannot foresee to-day the developments of tomorrow in their nearly infinite variety. The Interstate Commerce Commission, probing the economic situation of the railroads of the country, consolidating them into systems, shaping in numberless ways their capacities and duties, and even making or unmaking the prosperity of great communities (Texas & Pacific R. Co. v. United States, 289 U.S. 627, 53 S.Ct. 768, 77 L.Ed. 1410), is a conspicuous illustration. See, e.g., 41 Stat. 479-482, c. 91, §§ 405, 406, 407, 408, 42 Stat. 27, c. 20, 49 U.S.C. §§ 3, 4, 5 (49 USCA §§ 3-5). Cf. Inter-Mountain Rate Case (U.S. v. Atchison, T. & S.F.R. Co.), 234 U.S. 476, 34 S.Ct. 986, 58 L.Ed. 1408; N.Y. Central Securities Co. v. United States, 287 U.S. 12, 24, 25, 53 S.Ct. 45, 77 L.Ed. 138; Sharfman, The Interstate Commerce Commission, vol. 2, pp. 357, 365. There could surely be no question as to the validity of an act whereby carriers would be prohibited from transporting oil produced in contravention of a statute if in the judgment of the Commission the practice was demoralizing the market and bringing disorder and insecurity into the national economy. What may be delegated to a commission may be delegated to the President. 'Congress may feel itself unable conveniently to determine exactly when its exercise of the legislative power should become effective, because dependent on future conditions, and it may leave the determination of such time to the decision of an executive.' Hampton, Jr., & Co. v. United States, supra, at page 407 of 276 U.S., 48 S.Ct. 348, 351. Only recently (1932) the whole subject was discussed with much enlightenment in the Report by the Committee on Ministers' Powers to the Lord Chancellor of Great Britain. See, especially, pages 23, 51. In the complex life of to-day, the business of government could not go on without the delegation, in greater or less degree, of the power to adapt the rule to the swiftly moving facts.

A striking illustration of this need is found in the very industry affected by this section, the production of petroleum and its transportation between the states. At the passage of the National Recovery Act (48 Stat. 195) no one could be certain how many of the states would adopt valid quota laws, or how generally the laws would be observed when adopted, or to what extent illegal practices would affect honest competitors or the stability of prices or the conservation of natural resources or the return of industrial prosperity. Much would depend upon conditions as they shaped themselves thereafter. Violations of the state laws might turn out to be so infrequent that the honest competitor would suffer little, if any, damage. The demand for oil might be so reduced that there would be no serious risk of waste, depleting or imperiling the resources of the nation. Apart from these possibilities, the business might become stabilized through voluntary co-operation or the adoption of a code or otherwise. Congress not unnaturally was unwilling to attach to the state laws a sanction so extreme as the cutting off of the privilege of interstate commerce unless the need for such action had unmistakably developed. What was left to the President was to ascertain the conditions prevailing in the industry, and prohibit or fail to prohibit according to the effect of those conditions upon the phases of the national policy relevant thereto.

From a host of precedents available, both legislative and judicial, I cite a few as illustrations. By an act approved June 4, 1794, during the administration of Washington (1 Stat. 372; Field v. Clark, 143 U.S. 649, 683, 12 S.Ct. 495, 36 L.Ed. 294) Congress authorized the President, when Congress was not in session, and for a prescribed period 'whenever, in his opinion, the public safety shall so require, to lay an embargo on all ships and vessels in the ports or the United States, or upon the ships and vessels of the United States, or the ships and vessels of any foreign nation, under such regulations as the circumstances of the case may require, and to continue or revoke the same, whenever he shall think proper.' By an act of 1799, February 9 (1 Stat. 613, 615, § 4), suspending commercial intercourse with France and its dependencies, 'it shall be lawful for the President of the United States, if he shall deem it expedient and consistent with the interest of the United States, by his order, to remit, and discontinue, for the time being, the restraints and prohibitions aforesaid; * *  * and also to revoke such order (i.e., ree stablish the restraints), whenever, in his opinion, the interest of the United States shall require.' By an act of October 1, 1890 (26 Stat. 567, 612), sustained in Field v. Clark, supra, the President was authorized to suspend by proclamation the free introduction into this country of enumerated articles when satisfied that a country producing them imposes duties or other exactions upon the agricultural or other products of the United States which he may deem to be reciprocally unequal or unreasonable. By an act of September 21, 1922 (42 Stat. 858, 941, 945 (19 USCA §§ 154-159, 182 et seq.)), sustained in Hampton, Jr., & Co. v. United States, supra, the President was empowered to increase or decrease tariff duties so as to equalize the differences between the costs of production at home and abroad, and empowered, by the same means, to give redress for other acts of discrimination or unfairness 'when he finds that the public interest will be served thereby.' 19 USCA § 182. Delegation was not confined to an inquiry into the necessity or occasion for the change. It included the magnitude of the change, the delegate thus defining the act to be performed. By an act of June 4, 1897 (30 Stat. 11, 35), amended in 1905 (33 Stat. 628), regulating the forest reservations of the nation, the purpose of the reservations was declared to be 'to improve and protect the forest within the reservation,' and to secure 'favorable conditions of water flows, and to furnish a continuous supply of timber for the use and necessities of citizens of the United States.' Without further guide or standard, the Secretary of Agriculture was empowered to 'make such rules and regulations and establish such service as will insure the objects of such reservations, namely, to regulate their occupancy and use and to preserve the forests thereon from destruction.' The validity of these provisions was upheld in United States v. Grimaud, supra, as against the claim by one who violated the rules that there had been an unlawful delegation. Many other precedents are cited in the margin. They teach one lesson and a clear one.

There is no fear that the nation will drift from its ancient moorings as the result of the narrow delegation of power permitted by this section. What can be done under cover of that permission is closely and clearly circumscribed both as to subject-matter and occasion. The statute was framed in the shadow of a national disaster. A host of unforeseen contingencies would have to be faced from day to day, and faced with a fullness of under standing unattainable by any one except the man upon the scene. The President was chosen to meet the instant need.

A subsidiary question remains as to the form of the executive order, which is copied in the margin. The question is a subsidiary one, for, unless the statute is invalid, another order with fuller findings or recitals may correct the informalities of this one, if informalities there are. But the order to my thinking is valid as it stands. The President was not required either by the Constitution or by any statute to state the reasons that had induced him to exercise the granted power. It is enough that the grant of power had been made and that pursuant to that grant he had signified the will to act. The will to act being declared, the law presumes that the declaration was preceded by due inquiry and that it was rooted in sufficient grounds. Such, for a hundred years and more, has been the doctrine of this court. The act of February 28, 1795 (1 Stat. 424), authorized the President 'whenever the United States shall be invaded, or be in imminent danger of invasion from any foreign nation or Indian tribe,' to call forth such number of the militia of the states as he shall deem necessary and to issue his orders to the appropriate officers for that purpose. Cf. Const. art. 1, § 8, cl. 15. When war threatened in the summer of 1812, President Madison, acting under the authority of that statute, directed Major General Dearborn to requisition from New York, Massachusetts, and Connecticut certain numbers of the states' militia. American State Papers, Military Affairs, vol. 1, pp. 322 325. No finding of 'imminent danger of invasion' was made by the President in any express way, nor was such a finding made by the Secretary of War or any other official. The form of the requisitions to Massachusetts and Connecticut appears in the state papers of the government (American State Papers, supra); the form of those to New York was almost certainly the same. Replevin was brought by a New York militia man who refused to obey the orders, and whose property had been taken in payment of a fine imposed by a court martial. The defendant, a deputy marshal, defended on the ground that the orders were valid, and the plaintiff demurred because there was no allegation that the President had adjudged that there was imminent danger of an invasion. The case came to this court. Martin v. Mott, 12 Wheat. 19, 32, 6 L.Ed. 537. In an opinion by Story, J., the court upheld the seizure. 'The argument is (he wrote) that the power confided to the president is a limited power, and can be exercised only in the cases pointed out in the statute, and therefore, it is necessary to aver the facts which bring the exercise within the purview of the statute. In short, the same principles are sought t be applied to the delegation and exercise of this power intrusted to the executive of the nation for great political purposes, as might be applied to the humblest officer in the government, acting upon the most narrow and special authority. It is the opinion of the court, that this objection cannot be maintained. When the president exercises an authority confided to him by law, the presumption is, that it is exercised in pursuance of law. Every public officer is presumed to act in obedience to his duty, until the contrary is shown; and, a fortiori, this presumption ought to be favor ably applied to the chief magistrate of the Union. It is not necessary to aver, that the act which he might rightfully do, was so done.' A like presumption has been applied in other cases and in a great variety of circumstances. Philadelphia & Trenton R. Co. v. Stimpson, 14 Pet. 448, 458, 10 L.Ed. 535; Rankin v. Hoyt, 4 How. 327, 335, 11 L.Ed. 996; Carpenter v. Rannels, 19 Wall. 138, 146, 22 L.Ed. 77; Confiscation Cases (U.S. v. Clarke), 20 Wall. 92, 109, 22 L.Ed. 320; Knox County v. Ninth National Bank, 147 U.S. 91, 97, 13 S.Ct. 267, 37 L.Ed. 93; United States v. Chemical Foundation, 272 U.S. 1, 14, 15, 47 S.Ct. 1, 71 L.Ed. 131. This does not mean that the individual is helpless in the face of usurpation. A court will not revise the discretion of the Executive, sitting in judgment on his order as if it were the verdict of a jury. Martin v. Mott, supra. On the other hand, we have said that his order may not stand if it is an act of mere oppression, an arbitrary fiat that overleaps the bounds of judgment. Sterling v. Constantin, 287 U.S. 378, 399, 400, 401, 53 S.Ct. 190, 77 L.Ed. 375. The complainants and others in their position may show, if they can, that in no conceivable aspect was there anything in the conditions of the oil industry in July, 1933, to establish a connection between the prohibitory order and the declared policies of the Congress. This is merely to say that the standard must be such as to have at least a possible relation to the act to be performed under the delegated power. One can hardly suppose that a prohibitory order would survive a test in court if the Executive were to assert a relation between the transportation of petroleum and the maintenance of the gold standard or the preservation of peace in Europe or the Orient. On the other hand, there can be no challenge of such a mandate unless the possibility of a rational nexus is lacking altogether. Here, in the case at hand, the relation between the order and the standard is manifest upon the face of the transaction from facts so notorious as to be within the range of our judicial notice. There is significance in the fact that it is not challenged even now.

The President, when acting in the exercise of a delegated power, is not a quasi judicial officer, whose rulings are subject to review upon certiorari or appeal (Chicago Junction Case, 264 U.S. 258, 265, 44 S.Ct. 317, 68 L.Ed. 667; cf. Givens v. Zerbst, 255 U.S. 11, 20, 41 S.Ct. 227, 65 L.Ed. 475), or an administrative agency supervised in the same way. Officers and bodies such as those may be required by reviewing courts to express their decision in formal and explicit findings to the end that review may be intelligent. Florida v. United States, 282 U.S. 194, 215, 51 S.Ct. 119, 75 L.Ed. 291; Beaumont, Sour Lake & Western R. Co. v. United States, 282 U.S. 74, 86, 51 S.Ct. 1, 75 L.Ed. 221; United States v. Baltimore & Ohio R. Co., 293 U.S. 454, 55 S.Ct. 268, 79 L.Ed. 587, Jan. 7, 1935. Cf. Public Service Commission of Wisconsin v. Wisconsin Telephone Co., 289 U.S. 67, 53 S.Ct. 514, 77 L.Ed. 1036. Such is not the position or duty of the President. He is the Chief Executive of the nation, exercising a power committed to him by Congress, and subject, in respect of the formal qualities of his acts, to the restrictions, if any, accompanying the grant, but not to any others. One will not find such restrictions either in the statute itself or in the Constitution back of it. The Constitution of the United States is not a code of civil practice.

The prevailing opinion cites Wichita Railroad & Light Co. v. Public Utilities Commission of Kansas, 260 U.S. 48, 43 S.Ct. 51, 67 L.Ed. 124, and Mahler v. Eby, 264 U.S. 32, 44, 44 S.Ct. 283, 68 L.Ed. 549. One dealt with a delegation to a public utilities commission of the power to reduce existing rates if they were found to be unreasonable; the other a delegation to the Secretary of Labor of the power to deport aliens found after notice and a hearing to be undesirable residents. In each it was a specific requirement of the statute that the basic fact conditioning action by the administrative agency be stated in a finding and stated there expressly. If legislative power is delegated subject to a condition, it is a requirement of constitutional government that the condition be fulfilled. In default of such fulfillment, there is in truth no delegation, and hence no official action, but only the vain show of it. The analogy is remote between power so conditioned and that in controversy here.

Discretionary action does not become subject to review because the discretion is legislative rather than executive. If the reasons for the prohibition now in controversy had been stated in the order, the jurisdiction of the courts would have been no greater and no less. Investigation resulting in an order directed against a particular person after notice and a hearing is not to be confused with investigation preliminary and incidental to the formulation of a rule. An embargo under the act of 1794 would have been more than a nullity though there had been a failure to recite that what was done was essential to the public safety or to enumerate the reasons leading to that conclusion. If findings are necessary as a preamble to general regulations, the requirement must be looked for elsewhere than in the Constitution of the nation.

There are other questions as to the validity of section 9(c), 15 USCA § 709(c), in matters unrelated to the delegation of power to the President, and also questions as to the regulations adopted in behalf of the President by the Secretary of the Interior. They are not considered in the prevailing opinion. However, they have been well reviewed and disposed of in the opinion of Sibley, J., writing for the court below. It is unnecessary at this time to dwell upon them further.

The decree in each case should be affirmed.