Regulatory commission

“ And the Commission has this regulatory effect irrespective of whether it chooses to elaborate the vague but comprehensive statutory standards through rule-making or through case-by-case adjudication. Businesses whose practices appear clearly covered by the Trade Commission's adjudicatory decisions against similarly situated parties presumably will comply with the Commission's holding rather than await a Commission action against them individually ”

“ We harbor no doubt that Congress also intended to protect regulated parties from biased interpretations of the Secretary's regulations. But this objective is achieved when the Commission, and ultimately the court of appeals, review the Secretary's interpretation to assure that it is consistent with the regulatory language and is otherwise reasonable. Giving the Commission the power to substitute its reasonable interpretations for the Secretary's might slightly increase regulated parties' protection from overzealous interpretations. ”

“ Of course, the fact that there is substantial regulation does not preclude the regulatory agency from drawing on competition for complementary or auxiliary support. Satisfactory accommodation of the peculiarities of individual industries to the demands of the public interest necessarily requires in each case a blend of private forces and public intervention. The Commission itself has recognized as much by its changing policy toward authorization of duplicate facilities. ”

“ The passage of a federal regulatory statute is a delicate balancing of many national legislative interests and political forces. Congress need not go through the initial travail of re-enacting its general regulatory scheme every time a new form of enterprise is introduced, if that new form falls within the scheme's coverage. If there is deemed wise any adjustment of the regulatory scheme in the light of new developments in the subject matter to which it extends, Congress may make it. ”

“ Federal Power Commission (certiorari granted 343 U.S. 941, 72 S.Ct. 1034) . Abstract propositions may not solve concrete cases, but, when basic confusion is responsible for a particular result, resort to the fundamental principles which determine the position of the administrative process in our system may help to illuminate the shortcomings of that result.
The Act, like many regulatory measures, sketches a general outline which contemplates its completion and clarification by the administrative process before court review or enforcement. ”

“ III Appellees contend, however, that these cases and the general practice of agencies and courts in underwriting the broad use of rule-making are irrelevant to the FTC. They argue that the Trade Commission is somehow sui generis, that it is best characterized as a prosecuting rather than a regulatory agency, and that substantive rule-making power should be less readily implied from a general grant of rule-making authority where the agency does not stand astride an industry with pervasive license-granting, rate-setting, or clearance functions. ”

“ This not only undermines judicial fairness; it weakens public confidence in that fairness. Commission decisions affecting private rights and conduct lie under the suspicion of being rationalizations of the preliminary findings which the commission, in the role of prosecutor, presented to itself.' Administrative Management in the Government of the United States, Report of the President's Committee on Administrative Management, 36-37 (1937) .
The Committee therefore recommended a redistribution of functions within the regulatory agencies. ”

“ It is a question of policy, derived from due regard for, and based on understanding of, the regulatory scheme enacted by Congress, at which point a reviewing court should intervene. A conclusion that the agency's determination, resting on findings (where, as is normally true, they are required) appropriately supported by evidence, is within its power to make is a conclusion that the factors calling for intervention are absent. Compare Interstate Commerce Commission v. ”

“ The Court reserves the right to consider as "Cabinet-like" and hence as "Departments" those agencies which, above all others, are at the farthest remove from Cabinet status, and whose heads are specifically designed not to have the quality that the Court earlier thinks important, of being "subject to the exercise of political oversight and shar [ing] the President's accountability to the people," ante, at 886-namely, independent regulatory agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission and Securities Exchange Commission, ante, at 887, n. ”

“ The powers bestowed upon those commissions are based upon the assumption that the corporations under their jurisdiction cannot be trusted to take any important decision in respect to their business without official approval. All such acts must be known to the commission, and be either expressly or tacitly approved, and the official body has the power of ordering their wards to make any changes in their service or rates which in the opinion of the commission are desirable in the public interest. ”

“ We recognize that a public service commission, under the guise of establishing a fair rate, may not usurp the functions of the company's directors and in every case substitute its judgment for theirs as to the propriety of contracts entered into by the utility ”

“ The attempt to define in a comprehensive statute just what corporations may do, or must in the public interest be forbidden from doing, is not being tried, because of the apparent impossibility of providing in advance against every possible perversion of the public interest in the interest of the private corporation. The responsibility of the legislature for the protection of the public interest is consequently delegated to a commission whose duties are partly administrative and partly either legislative or judicial. ”

“ Surely an administrative agency is not a law unto itself, but the Court does not really face up to the fact that this is the justification it is offering for sustaining the Commission action.
Even if the Commission had, as the Court says, utilized this case to announce a new legal standard of conduct, there would be hurdles to be cleared, but we need not dwell on them now. Because to promulgate a general rule of law, either by regulation or by case law, is something the Commission expressly declined to do. ”

“ The regulation commission must be a tribune of the people, putting its engineering, accounting and legal resources into real use for the purpose of getting the facts and doing justice to both the consumers and the investors in public utilities. ”

“ A commission for the administration of executive business, like the Civil Service Commission, is a very different thing from a committee endowed with discretion to pass upon the interests of free and equal citizens, not being itself either executive, legislative, or judicial. Such a body will inevitably become the engine of either one interest or another against the rest, or sink into nonentity. Such a commission lacks all the guarantees of justice and of correct civil action which we have established around our legislative, judicial, and executive institutions. ”

“ Under the act to regulate commerce, such a constitutional question could hardly be practically raised, and the rights of the court to intervene must depend upon the limit placed upon the power of the commission by Congress in the enactment of the law, in fixing the standard which should guide the commission in its action. ”

“ Self-regulatory or legislative bodies interested in expanding consumer repair choices will need to determine whether the model’s approach or a more price and duration-prescriptive approach is appropriate. ”

“ Article 15, entitled, 'The Corporation Commission,' consists of nineteen sections, [1] and confers broad powers of regulation. The character of the service, that is, whether it is public or private, and not the character of the ownership, determines ordinarily the scope of the power of regulation. The need of such regulation and the manner of exercising it are the same whether a public utility is incorporated or not; and the purpose of a public service commission could easily be frustrated if concerns owned by individuals were excluded from its operation. ”

“ Moreover, the complexity of the Commissioner's approach ill serves the goal of administrative convenience that underlies the realization requirement. In order to apply the Commissioner's test in a principled fashion, the Commissioner and the taxpayer must identify the relevant market, establish whether there is a regulatory agency whose views should be taken into account, and then assess how the relevant market participants and the agency would view the transaction. ”

“ The Congress may not delegate its purely legislative power to a commission, but, having laid down the general rules of action under which a commission shall proceed, it may require of that commission the application of such rules to particular situations and the investigation of facts, with a view to making orders in a particular matter within the rules laid down by the Congress. ”

“ As always, we must begin with the words of the statute creating the Commission and delineating its powers. Section 5 [3] directs the Commission to [p675] "prevent persons, partnerships, or corporations * * * from using unfair methods of competition in commerce and unfair or deceptive acts or practices in commerce." [4] Section 5 (b) of the Trade Commission Act specifies that the Commission is to accomplish this goal by means of issuance of a complaint, a hearing, [5] findings as to the facts, and issuance of a cease and desist order. ”

“ If it is of no consequence that no rule of law be existent to support an administrative order, and the Court of Appeals is obliged to defer to administrative experience and to sustain a Commission's power merely because it has been asserted and exercised, of what use is it to print a record or briefs in the case, or to hear argument? Administrative experience always is present, at least to the degree that it is here, and would always dictate a like deference by this Court to an assertion of administrative power. ”

“ Whenever the Commission finds that any officer or employee in the executive branch has failed to adhere to established policies, regulations, and standards relating to personnel management subject to the jurisdiction of the Commission, it shall instruct the agency head to take corrective action. ”

“ Other agencies of government, in interpreting and administering the provisions of statutes specifically entrusted to them for enforcement, must be cautious not to complicate the Commission's administration of its own act by assuming as a fixed and universal rule what the Commission itself may prefer to develop in a more cautious and pragmatic manner through case-by-case adjudication. ”

“ Like considerations govern review of administrative orders. If an order is valid only as a determination of policy or judgment which the agency alone is authorized to make and which it has not made, a judicial judgment cannot be made to do service for an administrative judgment. For purposes of affirming no less than reversing its orders, an appellate court cannot intrude upon the domain which Congress has exclusively entrusted to an administrative agency. ”

“ Thus our inquiry is narrowed to the point of whether in the light of the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, Art. 6, cl. 2, a state may enter a judgment that grants respondents a recovery on the very stock purchase contract that justified the Commission's refusal of a license. [12]
Our former decisions interpretative of the Communications Act furnish a basis for examining this question. As an administrative body, the Commission must find its powers within the compass of the authority given it by Congress. ”

“ No more than three commissioners may be appointed from the same political party, and the President has the power to remove any commissioner for inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office. Authority is given to the commission to inquire into the management of the business of all common carriers subject to the provisions of the act and to require the attendance of witnesses and to invoke the aid of any court of the United States for that purpose. ”

“ The clear design of the statute is that the authority to decide, on behalf of the Government, to seek the powerful remedy of preliminary injunction, and the power to do so, are vested in the Attorney General. That is his business-his type of function. It is deliberately withheld from the Commission. That is not its business. The Commission is supposed to be an expert agency, acting deliberately, bringing to bear upon the complex economic problems of a merger, that judgment and experience which can emerge only from careful factual inquiry, the taking of evidence and the formulation of a report. ”

“ The necessity of a living, central, permanent authority had been rendered obvious by the disastrous working of the old system, arising partly from the absence of such control—an authority accumulating experience in itself, independent of local control, uninterested in favour of local abuse, and responsible to the Government. A Board of three Commissioners was therefore appointed under the Act, themselves appointing assistant Commissioners, capable of receiving the powers of the Commission by delegation. ”

“ So long as the banks obey the law, they need have no fear of the Treasury Department. But in commission government the official authority, in a sense, both makes and administers the law. The commission is empowered to use its own discretion about many matters, such as rates, service, equipment, and the like, in relation to which the law places the corporation absolutely in its hands. Such official interference is of a kind which can hardly fail in the long run to go wrong. ”