Swift Company v. United States (343 U.S. 373)/Dissent Frankfurter

by Felix Frankfurter

United States Supreme Court

343 U.S. 373

Swift Company  v.  United States (343 U.S. 373)

 Argued: March 6, 1952. --- Decided: May 5, 1952

Mr. Justice FRANKFURTER, dissenting.

The conflicting views of my brethren imply serious differences in interpreting the meaning and scope of the report of the Interstate Commerce Commission. Plainly, therefore, that report does not speak with the needed clarity. Therein lies my difficulty with the case. If what the Commission has done is ambiguous, how can I decide whether it was authorized to do what it did? Dubiety in the administrative order precludes intelligible judicial review.

As the Court views the matter, the Commission had before it merely a rate-fixing controversy and more specifically whether relevant transportation considerations justified imposition of a local switching charge of 4.8 cents per 100 pounds ^[1] in combination with the line-haul charge as a fair rate for delivery of livestock to private sidings. And the record, according to the Court, amply sustains the finding of the Commission that such a combination did not constitute an unreasonable rate. Mr. Justice REED and Mr. Justice DOUGLAS interpret the order not to be a rate-fixing order at all, but, in effect, a determination by the Interstate Commerce Commission that livestock, unlike all other Commodities, may be excluded from private sidings in the stockyards area, although this is done not in terms but by a designedly preferential rate. The difficulty is, of course, intensified in that the rate is in fact prohibitive.

Where, as here, this Court can draw only conflicting strands of reason from the explanation given by the Interstate Commerce Commission, we have not been spoken to with sufficient clearness. 'We must know what a decision means before the duty becomes ours to say whether it is right or wrong.' United States v. Chicago, M., St. P. & P.R. Co., 294 U.S. 500, 511, 55 S.Ct. 462, 467, 79 L.Ed. 1023. Therefore, I think the decision below should be reversed with direction to remand the case to the Interstate Commerce Commission for appropriate action.

Notes

1. This rate, in effect when the hearing was held, was based on a minimum of 60,000 pounds.