Schaffer Transportation Company v. United States/Dissent Frankfurter

by Felix Frankfurter

United States Supreme Court

355 U.S. 83

Schaffer Transportation Company  v.  United States

 Argued: Nov. 13, 1957. --- Decided: Dec 9, 1957

Mr. Justice FRANKFURTER (dissenting).

The Transportation Act of 1940 (amending the Interstate Commerce Act) grants to the Interstate Commerce Commission powers and imposes limitations upon their exercise in terms of greatly varying degrees of definiteness. As a consequence, the range of discretion left to the Commission and, correspondingly, the scope of judicial review of Commission orders greatly vary. Thus, our decision this day in Nos. 6 and 8, American Trucking Associations v. United States, 355 U.S. 141, 78 S.Ct. 165, is a striking illustration of the difference between the limitation to which the Commission is subjected in a proceeding under § 5(2)(b) of the Interstate Commerce Act, 24 Stat. 379, as amended, 49 U.S.C. § 5(2)(b), 49 U.S.C.A. § 5(2)(b), and the requirements of § 207 of that Act, as amended by 49 Stat. 551, 49 U.S.C. § 307, 49 U.S.C.A. § 307, although both relate to motor carrier service by railroads. The Commission's power to grant relief under the undefined terms of the long-and-short-haul clause of § 4 of that Act, as amended by the Mann-Elkins Act of June 18, 1910, 36 Stat. 539, 547, see Intermountain Rate Cases (U.S. v. Atchison, T. & S.F.R. Co.), 234 U.S. 476, 34 S.Ct. 986, 58 L.Ed. 1408, was modified by the specific requirements which Congress wrote into the long-and-short-haul clause in § 6 of the Transportation Act of 1940, 54 Stat. 904, 49 U.S.C. § 4(1), 49 U.S.C.A. § 4(1). In short, some rules dealing with the regulation of surface transportation are narrowly specific, leaving practically no scope for discretion in their application by the Interstate Commerce Commission. Other provisions are expressed in terms which necessarily leave considerable scope in the evaluation of their implied ingredients, while still others are of such breadth as to leave even wider opportunity for an exercise of judgment by the Commission not to be displaced by a court's independent judgment under the guise of judicial review.

In the case before us, the Interstate Commerce Commission denied an application for a certificate of public convenience and necessity under § 207(a) of the Interstate Commerce Act, as amended. On review of this denial, the three-judge District Court sustained the Commission. This Court reverses the District Court on the ground that the Commission has failed to enforce the National Transportation Policy in § 1 of the Transportation Act of 1940, 54 Stat. 899, 49 U.S.C., note preceding section 1, 49 U.S.C.A. note preceding section 1. The very name of these introductory recitals to the Transportation Act illumines their legal significance: 'All of the provisions of this Act shall be administered and enforced with a view to carrying out the above declaration of policy.' Congress thus conveyed to the Commission a most generalized point of view for carrying out its manifold, complicated and frequently elusive duties. In the very nature of things this Policy is unlike a more or less specific rule affording more or less defined criteria for application in a particular case. Still less does it afford concrete, definable criteria for judicial overturning of the Commission's conscientious attempt to translate such Policy into concreteness in a particular case.

No doubt the Commission is under obligation to heed what was declared to be 'the national transportation policy of the Congress,' namely, 'to provide for fair and impartial regulation of all modes of transportation subject to the provisions of this Act, so administered as to recognize and preserve the inherent advantages of each.' Surely these are not mechanical or self-defining standards. They inevitably imply the widest areas for judgment to be exercised, as the Commission has sought to exercise it, with the massive experience which must be attributed to it in this particular case. It is because I find myself regretfully in disagreement with my brethren regarding the nature and scope of the problem of judicial review in a case like this that I would affirm the judgment of the District Court.

It is, however, pertinent to add that the Court's decision may serve a useful purpose if it will lead the Interstate Commerce Commission, despite its enormous volume of business, to a more detailed and illuminating formulation of the reasons for the judgment that it reaches even in that class of cases where Congress has relied on the Commission's discretion in enforcing the most broadly expressed congressional policy. Since the orders in such cases also fall under judicial scrutiny, it is desirable to insist upon precision in the findings and the reasons for the Commission's action.

Notes